Heg Bad 1NC
1. Imperial overstretch and a declining economy doom US heg – empirically proven. Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor of capital formation and growth, Harvard University, Journal of Policy Modeling, 2006,
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~jfrankel/SalvatoreDeficitsHegemonJan26Jul.pdf The decline in the pound was clearly part of a larger pattern whereby the United Kingdom lost its economic preeminence, colonies, military power, and other trappings of international hegemony. As some of us wonder whether the United States might now have embarked on a path of “imperial over-reach,” following the British Empire down a road of widening federal budget deficits and overly ambitious military adventures in the Muslim world, the fate of the pound is perhaps a useful caution. The Suez crisis of 1956 is frequently recalled as the occasion on which Britain was forced under US pressure to abandon its remaining imperial designs. But the important role played by a simultaneous run on the pound is often forgotten.10 Paul Kennedy (1989)’s suggestion of the imperial overreach hypothesis and its application to US hegemony may have been essentially correct but 20years premature, much like the forecasts of those in the early 1990s who warned prematurely of the dollar’s imminent demise. Over the last four decades, our allies have been willing to pay a financial price to support American leadership of the international economy, because they correctly saw it to be in their interests. In the 1960s, Germany was willing to offset the expenses of stationing U.S. troops on bases there so as to save the United States from a balance of payments deficit. In the 1980s, the U.S. military was charged less to station troops in high-rent Japan than if they had been based at home. In 1991, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and a number of other countries were willing to pay for the financial cost of the war against Iraq, thus temporarily wiping out the U.S. current account deficit for the only time in a twenty-year period. Repeatedly the Bank of Japan, among other central banks, has been willing to buy dollars to prevent the U.S. currency from depreciating (late 1960s, early 1970s, late 1980s). During the same period that the United States has lost its budget surplus and the twin deficits have re-emerged, i.e., since 2001, we have also lost popular sympathy and political support in much of the rest of the world.11 In the past, deficits from imperial overstretch have been manageable because others have paid the bills for our troops overseas: Germany and Japan during the Cold War, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1991. Now the hegemon has lost its claim to legitimacy in the eyes of many. Next time the US asks other central banks to bail out the dollar, will they be as willing to do so as Europe was in the 1960s, or as Japan was in the late 1980s after the Louvre Agreement? I fear not.

2. Heg declining now – three reasons. Maintaining heg leads to a power vacuum which culminates in war. Carlos Eduardo Martins is research director of the UNESCO-UNU Network on the Global Economy and Sustainable
Development and an associate researcher at the Laboratory of Public Policy of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, translated by Timothy Thompson, Ph.D. candidate in English at Boston College. Latin American Perspectives 2007; 34; 16, http://lap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/1/16 I would argue that since 1967 the United States has been in a period of hegemonic decline. It still maintains its financial, ideological, and military hegemony, but it has been made increasingly vulnerable by the pressure that the current-account deficit in the balance of payments is exerting on the dollar, by neoliberalism’s crisis of legitimacy, and by the unfolding impact of September 11, 2001, which has reignited both U.S. imperialism and military-political reactions against it, threatening to expand the costs of securing the world-system to unforeseen dimensions.1 To situate the trajectory of U.S. hegemony in the world-system, we must bring the longue durée into our analysis. To do so, we should consider the

following analytical elements: 1. Systemic cycles, theorized by the world-system school in works by writers such as Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver (1999) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1996). These cycles are organized according to hegemonies divided into phases of expansion and crisis. During the crisis phase, the hegemon uses its financial power to continue leading global accumulation, but its financial strength soon gives way to increasing deterioration of its productive and commercial bases. The disintegration of hegemony gives rise to a stage of systemic chaos, and a bifurcation emerges in which new power structures vie for control. In historical capitalism, this process culminates in “thirty years’ wars” that end with a single configuration of power, one that reconstitutes the world-system upon new bases and increases both its breadth and the interaction among its parts. 3

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Heg Bad 1NC
3. We must transition away from unilateral hegemony now – transnationalism is the only way to prevent war. Maintaining hege leads to great power wars. Carlos Eduardo Martins is research director of the UNESCO-UNU Network on the Global Economy and Sustainable
Development and an associate researcher at the Laboratory of Public Policy of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, translated by Timothy Thompson, Ph.D. candidate in English at Boston College. Latin American Perspectives 2007; 34; 16, http://lap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/1/16 The trajectories of U.S. hegemony and the modern world-system in the coming decades should be understood in terms of these three long-run tendencies. I would argue that the expansion phase of a new Kondratieff cycle has been developing in the United States since 1994. This expansion will lack the brilliance of the phase that developed in the postwar period. It will be shorter and will promote lower rates of growth, since it will be affected by two downward trends: civilizational crisis and the B-phase of the systemic cycle. Within this new phase of expansion, the financial and ideological foundations of U.S. hegemony will deteriorate, and the United States will lose the leadership position that it exercised in the world economy from 1980 to 1990, when it was surpassed in dynamism only by East Asia. The world will enter a new phase of systemic chaos, and no nation-state will be able to reconstruct the world-system on new hegemonic bases. A bifurcation will occur: on one hand, there will be forces attempting to restore historical capitalism to U.S. imperialism via the cohesion of the principal centers of global wealth, and, on the other hand, there will be forces seeking to overcome the modern world-system through a posthegemonic system. This confrontation will occur not only among nation-states (although, in part, it may be oriented in terms of them) but also transnationally. The transnational dimension, aimed at creating new forms of power to direct both human existence and the planet, has already manifested itself, for example, in mass demonstrations against U.S. imperialism and the oligarchic coordination of the world economy and in attempts to organize social movements on a global scale, most notably in the World Social Forum. If transnationalism succeeds, humanity will be able to traverse the systemic chaos without succumbing to a cataclysmic war. Transnational forces will create “drive belts” across nation-states, circumventing global oligarchies. But if nationalism succeeds, it will be difficult to avoid a move toward fascism, barbarism, and the use of the state as an instrument of coercion.

4. Counterbalancing is already happening—US days of primacy are numbered Christopher Layne, Associate Professor of Bush School of Government and Public Service @ Texas A&M U, 2006 (“The Unipolar
Illusion Revisted: The Coming of the United States’Unipolar Moment”, International Security 31.2, 7-41, Project Muse) The United States' hegemonic grand strategy has been challenged by Waltzian balance of power realists who believe that the days of U.S. primacy are numbered and that other states have good reason to fear unbalanced U.S. power. 2 More recently, other scholars have argued that, albeit in nontraditional [End Page 7] forms, counterbalancing against the United States already is occurring. While many of these scholars favor primacy, they acknowledge that unless the United States wields its preponderant power with restraint, it could fall victim to a counterhegemonic backlash.

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Heg Bad 1NC
5. Current economic explanations of hege are wrong – it’s just a phase before the final collapse. Carlos Eduardo Martins is research director of the UNESCO-UNU Network on the Global Economy and Sustainable
Development and an associate researcher at the Laboratory of Public Policy of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, translated by Timothy Thompson, Ph.D. candidate in English at Boston College. Latin American Perspectives 2007; 34; 16, http://lap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/1/16 Many would disagree that the United States is losing its hegemonic position in the world economy. As a sign of renewed hegemony, they would point to the dollar’s conversion into a global currency that has financed the U.S. economic recovery since the 1980s. The hastiest would even assert that not only has the United States

begun to reclaim its financial and economic might but it has begun to approach the status of an empire. However, to undertake a careful analysis, we must reinstate history as a methodological premise. In Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System (1999), Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver assert that, if we take into account the longue durée, we will be able to identify patterns of repetition and evolution in the cycles of the modern world-system, patterns that may help us comprehend both the nature of the transformations we are living through and their consequences. Arrighi and Silver point out that when the productive and commercial bases of a hegemony deteriorate, the dominant power seeks to retain its leadership by developing a system of financial accumulation. Through its control of high finance, it drains resources from the world economy to finance its own economic growth, doing so in a competitive environment of contention for circulating capital. However, it cannot withstand either the economic competition of new power configurations or the ideological attrition of becoming a drag on the world economy.

6. Costs and counter-balancing make US hegemony unsustainable – abandoning hegemony now allows the US to engage in offshore balancing which avoids the risks of hegemony and a great collapse
Christopher Layne, 1998, Visiting Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, World Policy Journal, “Rethinking American grand strategy: Hegemony or balance of power in the twenty-first century?” Volume 15, Issue 2, Summer, Proquest) My argument for adopting an alternative grand strategy is prospective: although it may be sustainable for perhaps another decade, American hegemony cannot be maintained much beyond that period. The changing distribution of power in the international system--specifically, the relative decline of U.S. power and the corresponding rise of new great powers--will render the strategy of preponderance untenable. This strategy is also being undermined because the credibility of America's extended deterrence strategy is eroding rapidly. Over time, the costs and risks of the strategy of preponderance will rise to unacceptably high levels. The time to think about alternative grand strategic futures is now--before the United States is overtaken by events. In advocating an offshore balancing strategy, I do not deprecate those who believe that bad things (increased geopolitical instability) could happen if the United States were to abandon the strategy of preponderance. Indeed, they may; however, that is only half of the argument. The other half, seldom acknowledged by champions of preponderance, is that bad things--perhaps far worse things--could happen if the United States stays on its present strategic course. Grand strategies must be judged by the amount of security they provide; whether they are sustainable; their cost; the degree of risk they entail; and their tangible and intangible domestic effects. Any serious debate about U.S. grand strategy must use these criteria to assess the comparative merits of both the current grand strategy and its competitors. The time is rapidly approaching when the strategy of preponderance will be unable to pass these tests. The suggestion that the days of American hegemony are numbered no doubt will be met with disbelief by advocates of the current grand strategy. This is unsurprising. Having fulfilled their hegemonic ambitions following the Soviet Union's collapse, the advocates of preponderance want to keep the world the way it is. American grand strategists view the prospect of change in international politics in much the same way that British prime minister Lord Salisbury did toward the end of the nineteenth century. "What ever happens will be for the worse," Salisbury said, "and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible." However, it is the very fact of the Soviet Union's collapse that has knocked the props out from under the strategy of preponderance. The United States could be hegemonic only because the Soviet threat caused others to accept 5

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Heg Bad 1NC
American preeminence as preferable to Soviet domination. The United States could enjoy the relative predictability and stability of the bipolar era only because of the effects of bipolarity itself. Simply put, without the Cold War, America will not be able to preserve its Cold War preponderance or stability. International politics is dynamic, not static. As Paul Kennedy has observed, "It simply has not been given to any one society to remain permanently ahead of all the others...." 30 The conditions that made American preponderance possible are changing rapidly. Make no mistake: sometime in the early decades of the twenty-first century, America's grand strategy will no longer be preponderance. If the United States does not choose now to begin making the transition to a new grand strategy better suited to the new century's emerging international realities, events will force it to do so.

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Heg Unsustainable
US power is declining due to weak ground forces, overstretch, and poor staffing. Barry R. Posen is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The American Interest, Vol. 3, No. 2, Nov/Dec 2007, http://www.the-americaninterest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=331&MId=16 These enormous strengths masked certain weaknesses, however. U.S. active ground forces have been relatively small since conscription was abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. The all-volunteer ground forces of the United States shrunk quickly from their end-of-Cold War peak of nearly a million, reaching 470,000 in the Army and a bit under 170,000 in the Marines in 2001. By comparison, the United States had 440,000 soldiers and marines in Vietnam in 1969, out of a total personnel strength of nearly two million. Even with the 92,000-soldier increase now pledged by Republicans and Democrats alike, U.S. ground forces will remain small. It is difficult to maintain more than a third of a professional ground force in combat at any one time without suffering acute retention, recruitment and training problems. The United States now has roughly half of its forces deployed, and this is widely understood to be unsustainable. The demands of the Iraq war have essentially swallowed the Army and Marines over the past five years, and other possible U.S. adversaries dwarf Iraq in population—Iran is nearly three times as populous, Pakistan nearly six times. The U.S. national security establishment, to include the intelligence agencies and the State Department, also remains short of individuals who understand other countries and their cultures. It lacks sufficient numbers of analysts, diplomats, advisors and intelligence agents for the array of global engagement opportunities it has taken up. It also seems to lack the domestic political capacity to generate sufficient non-military material resources to support its foreign policy. Whether foreign economic assistance is money well spent or not, the United States has a difficult time generating these funds. In a more general sense, the American public has been trained by its politicians to be chary of taxes. So the U.S. government has financed much of its security effort since September 11, 2001 with borrowed money. Even obvious security-related taxes, such as a tax on gasoline to discourage consumption and thus help wean the United States off imported oil, find no political sponsors.

Hege unsustainable – economic circumstances prevent US primacy. Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor of capital formation and growth, Harvard University, Journal of Policy Modeling, 2006,
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~jfrankel/SalvatoreDeficitsHegemonJan26Jul.pdf I claimed a moment ago that the US can no longer necessarily rely on the support of foreign central banks. One reason for this, which holds even if China continues to keep its currency undervalued8 in order to enjoy export competitiveness, is that it can diversify its currency basket out of dollars, without allowing an appreciation on a trade-weighted basis. (Indeed this is the change that it officially announced in July 2005, but has not actually implemented.) The important point is that there now exists a credible rival for lead international reserve currency, the euro, which has many of the desirable characteristics of an international currency. This was not true in the late 1970s and early 1990s when the press feverishly speculated that the dollar might be overtaken by the yen or mark. It is true that each Asian central bank stands to lose considerably, in the value of its current holdings, if dollar sales precipitate a dollar crash. But I agree with Barry Eichengreen that each individual participant will realize that it stands to lose more if it holds pat than if it joins the run, when it comes to that. If we are relying on the economic interests of other countries, we cannot count on being bailed out indefinitely. In a recent paper, Menzie Chinn and I econometrically estimate determinants of reserve currency status (size of home economy, size of its financial markets, inflation rates, exchange rate volatility, trend depreciation, lagged adjustment, and a tipping phenomenon), and conclude that, under certain scenarios, the euro could surpass the dollar as leading international reserve currency by 2022. If this happened, the cost to the US would probably extend beyond the simple loss of seignorage narrowly defined. We would lose the exorbitant privilege of playing banker to the world, accepting short-term deposits at low interest rates in return for long-term investments at high average rates of return. When combined with other political developments, it might even spell the end of economic and political hegemony. These are century-long advantages that are not to be cast away lightly. 7

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Hege declining now – three reasons. This leads to a power vacuum which culminates in war. Carlos Eduardo Martins is research director of the UNESCO-UNU Network on the Global Economy and Sustainable
Development and an associate researcher at the Laboratory of Public Policy of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, translated by Timothy Thompson, Ph.D. candidate in English at Boston College. Latin American Perspectives 2007; 34; 16, http://lap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/1/16 I would argue that since 1967 the United States has been in a period of hegemonic decline. It still maintains its financial, ideological, and military hegemony, but it has been made increasingly vulnerable by the pressure that the current-account deficit in the balance of payments is exerting on the dollar, by neoliberalism’s crisis of legitimacy, and by the unfolding impact of September 11, 2001, which has reignited both U.S. imperialism and military-political reactions against it, threatening to expand the costs of securing the world-system to unforeseen dimensions.1 To situate the trajectory of U.S. hegemony in the world-system, we must bring the longue durée into our analysis. To do so, we should consider the

following analytical elements: 1. Systemic cycles, theorized by the world-system school in works by writers such as Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver (1999) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1996). These cycles are organized according to hegemonies divided into phases of expansion and crisis. During the crisis phase, the hegemon uses its financial power to continue leading global accumulation, but its financial strength soon gives way to increasing deterioration of its productive and commercial bases. The disintegration of hegemony gives rise to a stage of systemic chaos, and a bifurcation emerges in which new power structures vie for control. In historical capitalism, this process culminates in “thirty years’ wars” that end with a single configuration of power, one that reconstitutes the world-system upon new bases and increases both its breadth and the interaction among its parts.

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Transition Now
We must transition away from unilateral hegemony now – transnationalism is the only way to prevent war. Maintaining hege leads to great power wars. Carlos Eduardo Martins is research director of the UNESCO-UNU Network on the Global Economy and Sustainable
Development and an associate researcher at the Laboratory of Public Policy of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, translated by Timothy Thompson, Ph.D. candidate in English at Boston College. Latin American Perspectives 2007; 34; 16, http://lap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/1/16 The trajectories of U.S. hegemony and the modern world-system in the coming decades should be understood in terms of these three long-run tendencies. I would argue that the expansion phase of a new Kondratieff cycle has been developing in the United States since 1994. This expansion will lack the brilliance of the phase that developed in the postwar period. It will be shorter and will promote lower rates of growth, since it will be affected by two downward trends: civilizational crisis and the B-phase of the systemic cycle. Within this new phase of expansion, the financial and ideological foundations of U.S. hegemony will deteriorate, and the United States will lose the leadership position that it exercised in the world economy from 1980 to 1990, when it was surpassed in dynamism only by East Asia. The world will enter a new phase of systemic chaos, and no nation-state will be able to reconstruct the world-system on new hegemonic bases. A bifurcation will occur: on one hand, there will be forces attempting to restore historical capitalism to U.S. imperialism via the cohesion of the principal centers of global wealth, and, on the other hand, there will be forces seeking to overcome the modern world-system through a posthegemonic system. This confrontation will occur not only among nation-states (although, in part, it may be oriented in terms of them) but also transnationally. The transnational dimension, aimed at creating new forms of power to direct both human existence and the planet, has already manifested itself, for example, in mass demonstrations against U.S. imperialism and the oligarchic coordination of the world economy and in attempts to organize social movements on a global scale, most notably in the World Social Forum. If transnationalism succeeds, humanity will be able to traverse the systemic chaos without succumbing to a cataclysmic war. Transnational forces will create “drive belts” across nation-states, circumventing global oligarchies. But if nationalism succeeds, it will be difficult to avoid a move toward fascism, barbarism, and the use of the state as an instrument of coercion.

Offshore balancing is inevitable – hegemony will collapse – only a transition now avoids the risk of greater conflict and counter-balancing
Christopher Layne, 2002, Associate Professor in the School of International Studies at University of Miami, The Washington Quarterly, “U.S. Response to the ‘Looking Glass’”, Volume 25, Issue 2, Lexis) The events of September 11 make offshore balancing an attractive grand strategic alternative to primacy for two reasons. First, looking beyond the war on terrorism, the Persian Gulf/Middle East region is clearly, endemically unstable. If the United States attempts to perpetuate its hegemonic role in the region after having accomplished its immediate war aims, the probability of a serious geopolitical backlash within the region against the United States is high. Second, because the U.S. victory in the war on terrorism will underscore U.S. predominance in international politics, victory's paradoxical effect will be to heighten European, Russian, and Chinese fears of U.S. power. By adopting an offshore balancing strategy once the war on terrorism ends, the United States would benefit in two ways. First, others have much greater intrinsic strategic interests in the region than does the United States. For example, Western Europe, Japan, and, increasingly, China are far more dependent on the region's oil than the United States. Because they live next door, Russia, China, Iran, and India have a much greater long-term security interest in regional stability in the Persian Gulf/Middle East than the United States. By passing the mantle of regional stabilizer to these great and regional powers, the United States could extricate itself from the messy and dangerous geopolitics of the Persian Gulf/Middle East and take itself out of radical Islam's line of fire. Second, although a competitive component to U.S. relations with the other great powers in a multipolar world would be inescapable, multipolar politics have historically engendered periods of great-power cooperation. On the cooperative side, an offshore balancing strategy would be coupled with a policy of spheres of influence, which have always been an important item in the toolbox of great-power policymakers. By recognizing each other's paramount interests in certain regions, great powers can avoid the kinds of misunderstandings that could trigger conflict. Moreover, the mere act of signaling that one country understands another's larger security stake in a particular

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Transition Now
region, a stake that it will respect by noninterference, allows states to communicate a nonthreatening posture to one another. By recognizing the legitimacy of other interests, a great power also signals that it accepts them as equals. An offshore balancing strategy would immunize the United States9 against a post -- war-on-terrorism backlash against U.S. hegemony in one other way. By accepting the emergence of new great powers and simultaneously pulling back from its primacy-driven military posture, the United States would reduce perception of a "U.S. threat," thereby lowering the chances that others will view it as an overpowerful hegemon. In this sense, offshore balancing is a strategy of restraint that would allow the United States to minimize the risks of open confrontation with the new great powers. Being Panglossian about the reemergence of multipolarity in international politics would be silly. Multipolarity is not the best outcome imaginable. The best outcome would be a world in which every other state willingly accepted U.S. hegemony -- an outcome about which some may dream, but one that will never be realized in the real world. That outcome, however, is much better than the predictable outcome if the United States continues to follow a grand strategy of primacy. The outcome of that strategy will be really bad: not only will new great powers rise, they will also coalesce against what they perceive to be a U.S. threat. Notwithstanding the events of September 11, U.S. hegemony is the salient fact that defines the U.S. role in international politics. The articles in "Through the Looking Glass" reflect a deep mistrust of U.S. power that the temporary convergence of interests brought about by the war on terrorism will not wash away. Indeed, the reverse is true. In attaining victory in the war's opening round, the United States underlined its dominant role in the international system, and talk of a "new U.S. empire" echoes inside the beltway. Underscoring the paradox of U.S. power is the paradox of victory. Flushed with triumph and the awesome display of U.S. might, U.S. policymakers may succumb to hubris and overreach strategically in the false belief that U.S. hegemony is an unchallengeable fact of international life. Other states, however, will draw the opposite conclusion: that the United States is too powerful and that its hegemony must be resisted. Now, more than ever, having a great debate about future U.S. grand strategy is imperative. As that debate unfolds, offshore balancing will become the obvious successor strategy to primacy because it is a grand strategic escape hatch by which the United States can avoid the fate that has befallen previous hegemons in modern international history

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Offshore Balancing
Offshore balancing reduces the risk of being drawn into major wars while preventing the rise of a global challenger
Christopher Layne 1998, Visiting Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, World Policy Journal, “Rethinking American grand strategy: Hegemony or balance of power in the twenty-first century?” Volume 15, Issue 2, Summer, Proquest) Because of the interlocking effects of geography, nuclear weapons (which enhance insularity's strategic advantages), and formidable military and economic capabilities, the United States is virtually impregnable against direct attack. The risk of conflict, and the possible exposure of the American homeland to attack, derive directly from the overseas commitments mandated by an expansive definition of U.S. interests. In multipolar systems, insular great powers have a much broader range of strategic choices than less fortunately placed powers. They can avoid being entrapped by alliance commitments and need worry little about being abandoned by actual or potential allies. Offshore great powers also can choose to stay out of great power wars altogether or to limit their involvement-a choice unavailable to states that live in dangerous neighborhoods in which rivals lurk nearby. As an insular great power in a multipolar world, the United States would retain a free hand strategically: although it might need to enter into temporary coalitions, America would disengage from permanent alliance relationships. An insular great power like the United States need not subject itself to strategic constraints of this kind. The strategy of preponderance is based, in part, on the assumption that the United States must prevent the rise of a hegemonic challenger because other states either will not do the job, or at least will not do so effectively. In contrast, an offshore balancing strategy would recognize that, in a multipolar world, other states will balance against potential hegemons, and it is to America's advantage to shift this responsibility to them. In a multipolar world, the United States could be confident that effective balancing ultimately would occur because, to ensure their survival, other states have an incentive to balance against geographically proximate rivals, and great powers do not "bandwagon"--that is, they do not align with threatening, would-be hegemons. Because of its geographic position, the United States generally can stand aloof from security competitions and engage in strategic "buck passing," thereby forcing others to assume the risks and costs of balancing against threatening great powers. When an offshore balancer shifts to others the dangers entailed by "going first," it can reasonably hope that it will be able to avoid being drawn into war. The strategy of preponderance commits the United States to alliance relationships that run counter to geostrategic logic: it imposes the greatest burden (in terms of danger and cost) on the alliance partner (the United States) whose security is least at risk. An offshore balancing strategy, therefore, would reverse this pattern of alliance relations. There is no inherent reason why the United States should be compelled to bear the high costs of providing security for other states. Japan and Western Europe, for example, long have possessed the economic and technological capabilities to defend themselves. But the strategy of preponderance (notwithstanding U.S. complaints about burden-sharing inequities) has actively discouraged them from doing so because American policymakers fear any diminution of U.S. control over the international system (including control over U.S. allies) would have adverse geopolitical consequences. Washington has decided that it is more preferable strategically for the United States to defend Germany and Japan than it is for Germany and Japan to defend themselves. In contrast, offshore balancing would rest on the assumption that America's overall strategic position would be enhanced by devolving to others the responsibility for their own defense. The strategy of preponderance incorporates contradictory assumptions about the importance of relative power. On the one hand, the strategy seeks to maximize America's military power by perpetuating its role as the predominant great power in the international system. Yet, the strategy's economic dimension is curiously indifferent to the security implications of the redistribution of power in the international political system resulting from economic interdependence. Nor does the strategy resolve the following conundrum: given that economic power is the foundation of military strength, how will the United States be able to retain its hegemonic position in the international political system if its relative economic power continues to decline? In purely economic terms, an open international economic system may have positive effects. But economics does not take place in a political vacuum. Strategically, economic openness has adverse consequences: it contributes to, and accelerates, a redistribution of relative power among states in the international system (allowing rising competitors to catch up to the United States more quickly than they otherwise would).

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Offshore Balancing Solves War
Offshore balancing solves US involvement in great power conflict – it is an effective alternative to US hegemony
Christopher Layne in 1998, Visiting Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, World Policy Journal, “Rethinking American grand strategy: Hegemony or balance of power in the twenty-first century?” Volume 15, Issue 2, Summer, Proquest The United States is far better placed than Britain ever was to be a successful offshore balancer, for two reasons: America's margin of power relative to other great powers is, and is likely to remain, far greater than Britain's was, and the United States enjoys a far higher degree of immunity from external threat than Britain did. The underlying premise of an offshore balancing strategy is that it will become increasingly more difficult, dangerous, and costly for the United States to maintain order in, and control over, the international political system. In contrast to the strategy of preponderance, offshore balancing would define U.S. interests narrowly in terms of defending America's territorial integrity and preventing the rise of a Eurasian hegemon (that is, a state so powerful that, like Nazi Germany had Hitler been victorious, would potentially command sufficient resources to threaten North America). As an offshore balancer, the United States would disengage from its military commitments in Europe, Japan, and South Korea. The overriding objectives of an offshore balancing strategy would be to insulate the United States from possible future great power wars and maximize its relative power position in the international system. Offshore balancing would reject the strategy of preponderance's commitment to economic interdependence because interdependence has negative strategic consequences. Offshore balancing also would eschew any ambition to perpetuate U.S. hegemony and would abandon the ideological pretensions embedded in the strategy of preponderance. As an offshore balancer, there would be a strong presumption against U.S. involvement in the following kinds of activities: assertive promotion of democracy abroad; participation in peace enforcement operations; rescuing "failed states" (like Somalia and Haiti); and the use of military power for the purpose of humanitarian intervention. U.S. involvement in these types of external actions should be viewed skeptically because they seldom affect the geostrategic and security interests that would be the core of an American offshore balancing grand strategy. Offshore balancing is based on the following assumptions: balance of power strategies are superior to hegemonic ones; for a great power like the United States, economic interdependence is a danger, not a comfort; the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence commitments will be significantly degraded in coming years; U.S. strategy need not be burdened by excessive concern with credibility, resolve, and reputation; geography has important grand strategic implications; the risk of a rival Eurasian hegemon emerging is small; U.S. grand strategy can confidently assume that other states would balance against a potential hegemon; the dynamics of alliance relationships favor an offshore balancing strategy; and relative power concerns remain the bedrock of a prudent grand strategy.

Withdrawal impacts are wrong – abandoning preponderance won’t cause great wars
Christopher Layne 1998, Visiting Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, World Policy Journal, “Rethinking American grand strategy: Hegemony or balance of power in the twenty-first century?” Volume 15, Issue 2, Summer, Proquest) A related argument is that U.S. "isolationism" in the 1920s and 1930s had disastrous consequences and would have a similar effect in the future. Here, two points should be made. First, recent work by diplomatic historians has debunked the notion that the United States followed an isolationist policy during the 1930s. 29 Second, and more important, the United States became involved in the Pacific War with Japan not because it followed an isolationist policy but rather because it assertively defended its perceived East Asian interests (especially in China) from Japanese encroachment. It should also be noted that U.S. strategy toward Europe in 1939-41 was not isolationist but rather a shrewd example of offshore balancing. In 1939-40, the United States stood on the sidelines in the reasonable expectation that Britain and France could successfully hold Germany at bay. When France was defeated stunningly in the brief May-June 1940 campaign, the United States hoped to continue following an offshore balancing strategy based on providing military equipment and economic assistance to Britain and (after June 1941) to the Soviet Union, and fighting a limited liability naval war against German U-boats in the Atlantic. Had Germany not declared war on the United States, Washington might have persisted in that strategy indefinitely. In short, the historical record does not support the claim that European and Asian wars invariably compel the United States to intervene. Wars are not a force of nature that magnetically draws states into conflict. States, that is policymakers, have volition; they decide whether to go to war.

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Offshore Balancing Solves War
The insurance argument advanced by proponents of the strategy of preponderance is also problematic. Great power war is rare because it is always an uncertain undertaking: war is, therefore, to some extent its own deterrent. It is, however, an imperfect deterrent: great power wars do happen and they will happen in the future. Although the likelihood of U.S. involvement in future great-power conflict may be small, in a world where nuclear weapons exist the consequences of U.S. involvement in such a conflict could be enormous. The strategy of preponderance purports to ensure the United States against the risk of war.

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Offshore Balancing Solves Counterbalancing
Offshore balancing avoids counterbalancing
Christopher Layne 2002, Associate Professor in the School of International Studies at University of Miami, The Washington Quarterly, “U.S. Response to the ‘Looking Glass’”, Volume 25, Issue 2, Lexis Like primacy, offshore balancing is a strategy firmly rooted in the Realist tradition. Primacy adherents regard multipolarity -- an international system comprised of three or more great powers -- as a strategic threat to the United States, while offshore balancers see it as a strategic opportunity for the United States. Offshore balancing is predicated on the assumption that attempting to maintain U.S. hegemony is self-defeating because it will provoke other states to combine in opposition to the United States and result in the futile depletion of the United States' relative power, thereby leaving it worse off than if it accommodated multipolarity. Offshore balancing accepts that the United States cannot prevent the rise of new great powers either within (the EU, Germany, and Japan) or outside (China, a resurgent Russia) its sphere of influence. Offshore balancing would also relieve the United States of its burden of managing the security affairs of turbulent regions such as the Persian Gulf/Middle East and Southeast Europe. Offshore balancing is a grand strategy based on burden shifting, not burden sharing. It would transfer to others the task of maintaining regional power balances; checking the rise of potential global and regional hegemons; and stabilizing Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf/Middle East. In other words, other states would have to become responsible for providing their own security and for the security of the regions in which they live (and contiguous ones), rather than looking to the United States to do it for them.

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Heg Bad Modules – Terrorism
US hegemony causes backlash and terrorism Christopher Layne, Research Fellow with the Center on Peace and Liberty at The Independent Institute, Spring 2002 (“The
Washington Quarterly 25.2, pp 233-248, http://www.twq.com/02spring/layne.pdf) U.S. role in the Gulf has rendered it vulnerable to a hegemonic backlash on several levels. First, some important states in the region (including Iran and Iraq) aligned against the United States because they resented its intrusion into regional affairs. Second, in the Gulf and the Middle East, the self-perception among both elites and the general public that the region has Offshore Balancing Revisited l long been a victim of “Western imperialism” is widespread. In this vein, the United States is viewed as just the latest extraregional power whose imperial aspirations weigh on the region, which brings a third factor into play. Because of its interest in oil, the United States is supporting regimes—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Gulf emirates—whose domestic political legitimacy is contested. Whatever strategic considerations dictate that Washington prop up these regimes, that it does so makes the United States a lightning rod for those within these countries who are politically disaffected. Moreover, these regimes are not blind to the domestic challenges to their grip on power. Because they are concerned about inflaming public opinion (the much talked about “street”), both their loyalty and utility as U.S. allies are, to put it charitably, suspect. Finally, although U.S. hegemony is manifested primarily in its overwhelming economic and military muscle, the cultural dimension to U.S. preeminence is also important. The events of September 11 have brought into sharp focus the enormous cultural clash, which inescapably has overtones of a “clash of civilizations,” between Islamic fundamentalism and U.S. liberal ideology. The terrorism of Osama bin Laden results in part from this cultural chasm, as well as from more traditional geopolitical grievances. In a real sense, bin Laden’s brand of terrorism—the most dramatic illustration of U.S. vulnerability to the kind of “asymmetric warfare” of which some defense experts have warned—is the counterhegemonic balancing of the very weak. For all of these reasons, the hegemonic role that the strategy of preponderance assigns to the United States as the Gulf’s stabilizer was bound to provoke a multilayered backlash against U.S. predominance in the region. Indeed, as Richard K. Betts, an acknowledged expert on strategy, presciently observed several years ago, “It is hardly likely that Middle Eastern radicals would be hatching schemes like the destruction of the World Trade Center if the United States had not been identified so long as the mainstay of Israel, the shah of Iran, and conservative Arab regimes and the source of a cultural assault on Islam.”15 (Betts was referring to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.)

Terrorism will go nuclear – it makes genocides, wars, oppression, and governmental domination inevitable – the result is the end of the WORLD. Mohamed Sid-Ahmed 04 Political Analyst, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm
A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far from certain – the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded. What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.

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Heg Bad Modules – Economy
US hegemony destroys the economy
Ivan Eland 02, Director of defense policy studies Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 459- The Empire Strikes Out: The New Imperialism and Its Fatal Flaws, November 26, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa459.pdf) Most of all, the strategy of empire is likely to overstretch and bleed America’s economy and its military and federal budgets, and the overextension could hasten the decline of the United States as a superpower, as it did the Soviet Union and Great Britain. The strategy could also have the opposite effect from what its proponents claim it would have; that is, it would alarm other nations and peoples and thus provoke counterbalancing behavior and create incentives for other nations to acquire weapons of mass destruction as an insurance policy against American military might.

US economic collapse will spark global nuclear war Richard Cook, retired federal analyst, former Treasury Dept analyst, economic consultant, Global Research , 6-14-07,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5964] Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than face the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to World War II. Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they don’t want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes?

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Heg Bad Modules – Prolif (1/3)
Fear of US hegemony leads to nuclear proliferation Wilson Center, March 4, 2005 (“The Global Response to U.S. Primacy: Implications for Nonproliferation,
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?event_id=110376&fuseaction=events.event_summary) Professor Walt discussed the main themes of his forthcoming book, Taming America: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (Norton, 2005). He focused, in particular, on how American global preeminence affects the proliferation choices of other countries. Walt argued that the adverse perception of American power reflected in opinion polls (e.g., the Pew Global Attitudes Project) stems from three sources: first, the sheer magnitude of American power relative to other states; second, opposition to specific U.S. policies (such as the preventive war in Iraq), and third, Washington’s perceived double standard (e.g., tolerating nuclear proliferation in Israel while opposing it in Iran). Walt stated that states are either accommodating or resisting American power in this so-called era of unipolarity. The strategies of accommodation include: (1) “bandwagoning,” or deflecting U.S. power through appeasement or acquiescence; (2) enlisting the United States to address regional security problems (e.g., Qatar); and (3) “bonding” or aligning with the United States to shape U.S. policy and gain concessions or prestige (e.g., British Prime Tony Blair’s approach toward both the Clinton and Bush administrations). The strategies of resistance include: (1) balancing (as pursued diplomatically by the French, German and Russian governments in the United Nations during the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War); (2) asymmetric responses – such as the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction by “rogue states” in an effort to level the playing field with the United States; (3) “blackmail” (as North Korea is trying to do with its nuclear weapons program); (4) “balking” – just saying no (e.g., Russia’s continuing nuclear relationship with Iran despite U.S. objections); and (5) delegitimation – attempting to portray U.S. actions as self-interested and illegitimate. Walt concluded that international concerns about U.S. power are undermining Washington’s nonproliferation efforts.

Prolif will trigger preemptive nuclear wars around the planet Victor Utgoff, Deputy Director of Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of Institute for Defense Analysis, “Proliferation, Missile Defence and American Ambitions,” Survival, Summer, p. 87-90, 2002
Further, the large number of states that became capable of building nuclear weapons over the years, but chose not to, can be reasonably well explained by the fact that most were formally allied with either theUnited Statesor theSoviet Union. Both these superpowers had strong nuclear forces and put great pressure on their allies not to build nuclear weapons. Since the Cold War, theUShas retained all its allies. In addition, NATO has extended its protection to some of the previous allies of theSoviet Unionand plans on taking in more. Nuclear proliferation by India and Pakistan, and proliferation programmes by North Korea, Iran and Iraq, all involve states in the opposite situation: all judged that they faced serious military opposition and had little prospect of establishing a reliable supporting alliance with a suitably strong, nucleararmed state. What would await the world if strong protectors, especially theUnited States, were [was] no longer seen as willing to protect states from nuclear-backed aggression? At least a few additional states would begin to build their own nuclear 5 these initiatives would spur increasing numbers of the world’s capable states to follow suit. Restraint would seem ever less necessary and ever more dangerous. Meanwhile, more states are becoming capable of building nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Many, perhaps most, of the world’s states are becoming sufficiently wealthy, and the technology for building nuclear forces continues to improve and spread. Finally, it seems highly likely that at some point, halting proliferation will come to be seen as a lost cause and the restraints on it will disappear. Once that happens, the transition to a highly proliferated world would probably be very rapid. While some regions might be able to hold the line for a time, the threats posed by wildfire proliferation in most other areas could create pressures that would finally overcome all restraint. Many readers are probably willing to accept that nuclear proliferation is such a grave threat to world peace that every effort should be made to avoid it. However, every effort has not been made in the past, and we are talking about much more substantial efforts now. For new and substantially more burdensome efforts to be made to slow or stop nuclear proliferation, it needs to be established that the highly proliferated nuclear world that would sooner or later evolve without such efforts is not going to be acceptable. And, for many reasons, it is not. First,the dynamics of getting to a highly proliferated world could be very dangerous. Proliferating states will feel great pressures to obtain nuclear weapons and delivery systems before any potential opponent does. Those who succeed in outracing an opponent may consider preemptive nuclear war before the opponent becomes capable of nuclear retaliation. Those who

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Heg Bad Module – Prolif (2/3)
lag behind might try to preempt their opponent’s nuclear programme or defeat the opponent using conventional forces. And those who feel threatened but are incapable of building nuclear weapons may still be able to join in this arms race by building other types of weapons of mass destruction, such as biological weapons. Second, as the world approaches complete proliferation, the hazards posed by nuclear weapons today will be magnified many times over. Fifty or more nations capable of launching nuclear weapons means that the risk of nuclear accidents that could cause serious damage not only to their own populations and environments, but those of others, is hugely increased. The chances of such weapons failing into the hands of renegade military units or terrorists is far greater, as is the number of nations carrying out hazardous manufacturing and storage activities. Worse still, in a highly proliferated world there would be more frequent opportunities for the use of nuclear weapons. And more frequent opportunities means shorter expected times between conflicts in which nuclear weapons get used, unless the probability of use at any opportunity is actually zero. To be sure, some theorists on nuclear deterrence appear to think that in any confrontation between two states known to have reliable nuclear capabilities, the probability of nuclear weapons being used is zero.’ These theorists think that such states will be so fearful of escalation to nuclear war that they would always avoid or terminate confrontations between them, short of even conventional war. They believe this to be true even if the two states have different cultures or leaders with very eccentric personalities. History and human nature, however, suggest that they are almost surely wrong. History includes instances in which states ‘known to possess nuclear weapons did engage in direct conventional conflict.ChinaandRussiafought battles along their common border even after both had nuclear weapons. Moreover, logic suggests that if states with nuclear weapons always avoided conflict with one another, surely states without nuclear weapons would avoid conflict with states that had them. Again, history provides counter-examplesEgyptattackedIsraelin 1973 even though it sawIsraelas a nuclear power at the time.Argentinainvaded theFalkland Islandsand foughtBritain’s efforts to take them back, even thoughBritainhad nuclear weapons. Those who claim that two states with reliable nuclear capabilities to devastate each other will not engage in conventional conflict risking nuclear war also assume that any leader from any culture would not choose suicide for his nation. But history provides unhappy examples of states whose leaders were ready to choose suicide for themselves and their fellow citizens. Hitler tried to impose a ‘victory or destruction’’ policy on his people as Nazi Germany was going down to defeat. AndJapan’s war minister, during debates on how to respond to the American atomic bombing, suggested ‘Would it not be wondrous for the whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?” If leaders are willing to engage in conflict with nuclear-armed nations, use of nuclear weapons in any particular instance may not be likely, but its probability would still be dangerously significant. In particular, human nature suggests that the threat of retaliation with nuclear weapons is not a reliable guarantee against a disastrous first use of these weapons. While national leaders and their advisors everywhere are usually talented and experienced people, even their most important decisions cannot be counted on to be the product of well-informed and thorough assessments of all options from all relevant points of view. This is especially so when the stakes are so large as to defy assessment and there are substantial pressures to act quickly, as could be expected in intense and fast-moving crises between nuclear-armed states. Instead, like other human beings, national leaders can be seduced by wishful thinking. They can misinterpret the words or actions of opposing leaders. Their advisors may produce answers that they think the leader wants to hear, or coalesce around what they know is an inferior decision because the group urgently needs the confidence or the sharing of responsibility that results from settling on something. Moreover, leaders may not 18ecognize clearly where their personal or party interests diverge from those of their citizens. Under great stress, human beings can lose their ability to think carefully. They can refuse to believe that the worst could really happen, oversimplify the problem at hand, think in terms of simplistic analogies and play hunches. The intuitive rules for how individuals should respond to insults or signs of weakness in an opponent may too readily suggest a rash course of action. Anger, fear, greed, ambition and pride can all lead to bad decisions. The desire for a decisive solution to the problem at hand may lead to an unnecessarily extreme course of action. We can almost hear the kinds of words that could flow from discussions in nuclear crises or war. ‘These people are not willing to die for this interest’. ‘No sane person would actually use such weapons’. ‘Perhaps the opponent will back down if we show him we mean business by demonstrating a willingness to use nuclear weapons’. ‘If I don’t hit them back really hard, I am going to be driven from office, if not killed’. Whether right or wrong, in the stressful atmosphere of a nuclear crisis or war, such words from others, or silently from within, might resonate too readily with a harried leader. Thus, both history and human nature suggest that nuclear deterrence can be expected to fail from time to time, and we are fortunate it has not happened yet. But the threat of nuclear war is not just a matter of a few weapons being used. It could get much worse. Once a conflict reaches the point where nuclear weapons are employed, the stresses felt by the leaderships would rise enormously. These stresses can be

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Heg Bad Modules – Prolif (3/3)
expected to further degrade their decision-making. The pressures to force the enemy to stop fighting or to surrender could argue for more forceful and decisive military action, which might be the right thing to do in the circumstances, but maybe not. And the horrors of the carnage already suffered may be seen as justification for visiting the most devastating punishment possible on the enemy.’ Again, history demonstrates how intense conflict can lead the combatants to escalate violence to the maximum possible levels. In the Second World War, early promises not to bomb cities soon gave way to essentially indiscriminate bombing of civilians. The war between Iran and Iraq during the 1980s led to the use of chemical weapons on both sides and exchanges of missiles against each other’s cities. And more recently, violence in the Middle East escalated in a few months from rocks and small arms to heavy weapons on one side, and from police actions to air strikes and armoured attacks on the other. Escalation of violence is also basic human nature. Once the violence starts, retaliatory exchanges of violent acts can escalate to levels unimagined by the participants before hand. Intense and blinding anger is a common response to fear or humiliation or abuse. And such anger can lead us to impose on our opponents whatever levels of violence are readily accessible. In sum, widespread proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot-outs will have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand. Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the American Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear ‘six-shooters’ on their hips, the world may even be a more polite place than it is today, but every once in a while we will all gather on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations. This kind of world is in no nation’s interest. The means for preventing it must be pursuedvigorously. And, as argued above,a most powerful way to prevent it or slow its emergence is to encourage the more capable states to provide reliable protection to others against aggression, even when that aggression could be backed with nuclear weapons. In other words,the world needs at least one state, preferably several,willingand ableto play the role of sheriff, or to be members of a sheriff’s posse, even in the face of nuclear threats

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Heg Bad Modules – Iraq
The US military is destabilizing; removing troops ensures regional security without anti-American backlash.
Christopher Preble 2003, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at CATO and Former U.S. Navy Officer, CATO Policy Analysis, “After Victory: Toward a New Military Posture in the Persian Gulf”, p. Online: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa477.pdf) On a broader level, the Middle East need not be stabilized by an overwhelming American military presence. U.S. troops provide a greater level of security than what regional actors might choose to provide. To the extent that American troops have become a lightning rod for anti-American extremists, however, U.S. troops have been a notably destabilizing influence. In short, there is a middle ground between U.S. hegemony and total chaos wherein stability can exist without the presence of thousands of American troops and without generating an anti- American, anti-democratic backlash.

Middle East instability goes nuclear. John Steinbach, DR Iraq Coalition, 2002, Centre for Research on Globalisation, March 3,
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Israel/Israel's_Nuclear%20Weapons.html Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has

serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum(and the) next war will not be conventional ."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been
a major(if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian

heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of
Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon- for whatever reason- the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44)

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Heg Bad Modules – China (1/2)
US hegemony in East Asia hurts US-China relations Wu Xinbo, Visiting Fellow, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, September 2000 (“U.S. Security Policy in Asia:
Implications for China-U.S. Relations”, http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cnaps/papers/2000_wu.htm) Three major factors have constantly troubled Sino-U.S. relations in the post-Cold War era: human rights, trade, and security. With the de-linking of China's human rights record from its MFN treatment in 1994 and the closing of Beijing-Washington marathon negotiations on China's WTO membership in 1999, human rights and trade may subside as major sources of tension on the bilateral agenda. Security issues, emerging in the mid-1990s, now appear to be the most important factor affecting bilateral relations. Due primarily to differences in their worldviews, historical experiences and capabilities, China and the U.S. have diverging conceptions of security, which in turn has led to their different security practices. Chinese and U.S. security interests in Asia both converge and diverge, and as the U.S. begins to contemplate China as a latent adversary, such divergence will become even more conspicuous. While both sides will continue to pursue their own security interests in Asia, each country also has to adapt itself to the changing political, economic and security landscape in this region. To enable durable, peaceful coexistence, both sides will have to make certain shifts in their current security policies. To address these questions more directly, this paper first considers some of the U.S. misperceptions about China's policy objectives in the Asia-Pacific and certain important conceptual differences on security practices between Beijing and Washington. Then, the study explores how China perceives the U.S. impact on its security interests. Finally, the paper concludes with a few policy recommendations as to how China and the United States could manage the bilateral relationship more effectively. Misperceptions and Conceptual Differences One popular perception in the U.S. about China's long-term policy objectives in Asia is that Beijing aspires to be the regional hegemon and would like to restore a Sino-centric order in this part of the world. This observation is wrong. First, Beijing believes in the trend of multipolarization rather than unipolarization at both global and regional levels, and predicts that with continued economic development and growing intraregional political consultation in Asia, influence on regional affairs will be more diversified and more evenly distributed. Secondly, even though China expects some relative increase in its influence in Asia, it understands that because of the limits of its hard power and especially its soft power, China can never achieve a position comparable to its role in the ancient past or to the U.S. role in the region at present. Another misperception is that in the long run China will endeavor to drive the U.S. out of East Asia. Again this is not a correct assumption. From Beijing's perspective, the United States is an Asia-Pacific power, although not an Asian power, and its political, economic and security interests in the region are deep-rooted, as are its commitments to regional stability and prosperity. In fact, Beijing has always welcomed a constructive U.S. role in regional affairs. At the same time however, Beijing also feels uneasy with certain aspects of U.S. policy. As a superpower, the United States has been too dominant and intrusive in managing regional affairs. It fails to pay due respect to the voices of other regional players, and sometimes gets too involved in the internal affairs of other states, lacking an understanding of their culture, history and values. While there is no danger of the U.S. being driven out of East Asia, its current policy may result in the U.S. wearing out its welcome in the region, thus undermining its contributions to stability and prosperity. In addition to the above misperceptions about China's regional intentions, the United States and China also hold diverging conceptions of national and regional security. Hegemonic stability vs. security cooperation In the post-Cold War era, Washington has been advocating an Asia-Pacific security structure with the U.S. as the sole leader and with U.S.-led bilateral alliances as the backbone. This is in essence hegemonic stability. Beijing believes, however, that regional security rests on the cooperation of regional members and a blend of various useful approaches (unilateral, bilateral and multilateral, institutional and non-institutional, track I and track II, etc.), not just on one single country and a set of bilateral security alliances.

Breakdown of US-Chinese relations will cause a black swan that starts the next global war- economic interdependence doesn’t check Niall Ferguson, Professor of history and business administration at Harvard, Citywire, July 3, 2007, p. Lexis
The breakdown of Chinese American relations over an issue such as Taiwan could be another cause of a black swan. It would also mirror the circumstances setting off World War One when Germany and England sacrificed the height of free trade to attack each other. Economics were irrelevant. The assassination of Serbian Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914 was more important for financial market liquidity than the 1929 stock market crash, Ferguson asserted. World financial markets closed for five months after the murder from 1 August to 1 January, 1915 while they didn't close during the Great Depression.

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Heg Bad Modules -China (2/2)
War between the US and China would likely involve nuclear weapons and result in hundreds of millions of deaths The Internationalist, May 26, 2007, p. http://www.abytheliberal.com/world-politics/united-states-vs-china-consequences-of-anuclear-war If we take more realistic standards, a nuclear war between China and USA would result in much higher casualties for both sides. One would most likely obliterate the other or worse, both countries would be destroyed before a truce or victory call could be reached. It is most likely US would suffer most because majority of its 300 million population lives in the major cities which are in China’s missile targets (as a deterrance to US). China would suffer similar casualty in terms of numbers, however in terms of percentage of population it would hurt less than US. In short neither country wants a war with the other, the casualties and destruction being the strongest deterrents. The capability of China defend itself and strike back hard in case of an attack built a strong incentive for USA to try a hand diplomatic solutions to problem rather than foreign policy based in economic and military warfare, blackmails, threats and destabilising governments.

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Heg Bad Modules – EU
US drive for hegemony undermine transatlantic relations
Hug De Santis ‘1999, Former Official in the State Department and Professor of International Security Policy at the National War College, World Policy Journal, “Mutualism: An American strategy for the next century”, Volume 15, Issue 4, Winter 1998/1999, Proquest) The structures for cooperative security already loosely exist in Europe; what is missing--in Washington and in Brussels--is the political will to animate them. The reality is that Europe cannot control its political destiny and simultaneously remain militarily dependent on the United States any more than the United States can expect its allies to assume greater defense obligations while it exercises political hegemony over them. In the absence of a global military threat, such contradictory aims will gradually fray the bonds of transatlantic cohesion. As a consequence of the effects of globalization, we may not have to wait long. For just as monetary union is likely to increase Europe's global economic profile, it will also transform transatlantic security relations.

US-EU relations are key to preventing Russian aggression in Central Asia
Zbigniew Brzezinski ‘03, Former National Security Advisor, The National Interest, “Hegemonic Quicksand”, Issue 74, Winter 03/04, Proquest) While Russia has not stood in the way of any decisive U.S. military efforts to alter the strategic realities of the region, the current geopolitical earthquake in the Persian Gulf could jeopardize America's efforts to consolidate the independence of the Caspian Basin states. American preoccupation with the mess in Iraq, not to mention the cleavage between America and Europe as well as the increased American-Iranian tensions, has already tempted Moscow to resume its earlier pressure on Georgia and Azerbaijan to abandon their aspirations for inclusion in the Euro-Atlantic community and to step up its efforts to undermine any enduring U.S. political and military presence in Central Asia. That would make it more difficult for the United States to engage the Central Asian states in a larger regional effort to combat Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A resurgence of Muslim extremism of the Taliban variety could then even acquire a regional scope. These risks could be lessened by closer U.S.-EU strategic collaboration with regard to Iraq and Iran. That may not be easy to achieve, given divergent American and European perspectives, but the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs of any compromise. For the United States, a joint approach would mean less freedom of unilateral action; for the European Union, it would mean less opportunity for self-serving inaction. But acting together-with the threat of U.S. military power reinforced by the EU's political, financial and (to some degree) military support-the Euro-Atlantic community could foster a genuinely stable and possibly even democratic post-Saddam regime.

The Impact is Global instability and WMD conflict
Ariel Cohen in ’96, Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder #1065, “The New "Great Game": Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia”, January 25, http://www.heritage.org/Research/RussiaandEurasia/BG1065.cfm) Much is at stake in Eurasia for the U.S. and its allies. Attempts to restore its empire will doom Russia's transition to a democracy and free-market economy. The ongoing war in Chechnya alone has cost Russia $ 6 billion to date (equal to Russia's IMF and World Bank loans for 1995). Moreover, it has extracted a tremendous price from Russian society. The wars which would be required to restore the Russian empire would prove much more costly not just for Russia and the region, but for peace, world stability, and security. As the former Soviet arsenals are spread throughout the NIS, these conflicts may escalate to include the use of weapons of mass destruction. Scenarios including unauthorized missile launches are especially threatening. Moreover, if successful, a reconstituted Russian empire would become a major destabilizing influence both in Eurasia and throughout the world. It would endanger not only Russia's neighbors, but also the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Middle East. And, of course, a neo-imperialist Russia could imperil the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf. Domination of the Caucasus would bring Russia closer to the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Middle East. Russian imperialists, such as radical nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, have resurrected the old dream of obtaining a warm port on the Indian Ocean. If Russia succeeds in establishing its domination in the south, the threat to Ukraine, Turkey, Iran, and Afganistan will increase. The independence of pro-Western Georgia and Azerbaijan already has been undermined by pressures from the Russian armed forces and covert actions by the intelligence and security services, in addition to which Russian hegemony would make Western political and economic efforts to stave off Islamic militancy more difficult

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Heg Good 1NC
1. Despite overstretch – America is still the worlds lone superpower and no one can challenge it Economist, 07 (Economist Online, “The Hobbled Hegemon: Its troubles in Iraq have much weakened it; but America is
likely to remain the dominant superpower,” June 28th, http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9401945) Senior American officials console themselves with the thought that, whatever happens in Iraq, America will bounce back. Before long, perhaps after Mr Bush has left the White House, those complaining about America's America still spends roughly as much on defence as the rest of the world put together (see chart 2), and remains the only country able to project military power globally. Next year's budget request for $623 billion (“a gargantuan sum”, according to one Pentagon official) represents 4% of GDP, which is low by historical standards (see chart 4). Military commanders often say that “the nation is not at war; the military is at war”; that is, the American public is not yet making real sacrifices. Taxes remain low, while the casualties are moderate enough not to be greatly felt, particularly by the urban elite. America has ample reserves to defend its global role and, Mr Krepinevich argues, potential rivals also have weaknesses. European countries are rich, but for the most part they are unwilling to spend money on military power; Russia's production of oil and gas is declining, and its population is in a demographic death-spiral; China may yet undergo internal upheavals that could disrupt its economy. Robert Kagan, a prominent commentator, is confident that the American-dominated

“unipolar” world will endure. America has weathered worse disasters than Iraq, he says, not least soon after victory in the second world war, when the Soviet Union developed the hydrogen bomb and communists took power in China. Certainly America faces stronger regional antagonists, but none is yet competing for global supremacy, whether alone or in concert. If anything, many states want America's help to “balance” a rising China and a growling Russia. “A superpower can lose a war—in Vietnam or in Iraq—without ceasing to be a superpower,” says Mr Kagan, “so long as the American public continues to support American predominance, and so long as potential challengers inspire more fear than sympathy among their neighbours.”

2. The inevitability of decline is irrelevant. Must use our leadership to engineer a soft-landing, pulling out now leads to international upheaval and all our war scenarios.
Zbigniew Brzezinski 2004,The Former Sect. Of State, Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Perseus, New York, lexis History is a record of change, a reminder that nothing endures indefinitely. It can also remind us, however, that some things endure for a long time, and when they disappear, the status quo ante does not reappear. So it will be with the current American global preponderance. It, too, will fade at some point, probably later than some wish and earlier than many Americans take for granted. The key question is: What will replace it? An abrupt termination of American hegemony would without doubt precipitate global chaos, in which international anarchy would be punctuated by eruptions of truly massive destructiveness. An unguided progressive decline would have a similar effect, spread out over a longer time. But a gradual and controlled devolution of power could lead to an increasingly formalized global community of shared interest, with supranational arrangements increasingly assuming some of the special security roles of traditional nation-states.

3. Countries will not counterbalance the US because others will balance them
Robert Kagan, Alexander Hamilton Fellow at American Universit, The Washington Post, “Still the Colossus,” January 15, 2006, Editorial, B07 There are also structural reasons why American indispensability can survive even the unpopularity of recent years. The political scientist William Wohlforth argued a decade ago that the American unipolar era is durable not because of any love for the United States but because of the basic structure of the h, even in that power's own region, is that long before it becomes strong enough to balance the United States, it may frighten its neighbors into balancing against it. Europe would be the exception to this rule were it increasing its power, but it is not. Both Russia and China face this problem as they attempt to exert greater influence even in their traditional spheres of influence. 24

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Heg Good 1NC
4. Allies can’t maintain regional order and deter rising powers – the US must remain engaged Larry Diamond, Senior researcher fellow at Hoover Institution, Orbis, “Beyond the Unipolar Moment: Why the United States Must Remain Engaged”, p. 405-413, 1996
As for provoking our allies to pick up the burden and coalesce, certainly we need to pursue more-equitable burden sharing. And to some extent (especially in the war in the Persian Gulf), we have done so. But there are three serious problems with the confident assumption that our allies can and will fill the gaps we leave. First, they may judge that, absent a significant U.S. security presence, they lack the collective power to balance and deter a rising regional power. Thus, they may consider the only realistic course to be to fall into its power orbit, to capitulate preemptively and join its bandwagon. Secondly, enough countries in a region may judge capitulation cheaper and easier than resistance, so that the others have no choice but to fall in line. As Samuel Huntington has suggested, the prospect of East Asian countries, from japan to Thailand, responding to China in this way is very real, and it will increase significantly if the United States withdraws as a balancing force. The same can be said with respect to Iran and its smaller Gulf neighbors. Thirdly, we should always beware of what we wish for-it may come true. For instance, the time may be at hand to assign a much more active security role to a Germany that has long since candidly acknowledged its war crimes and become a leading force for European integration. Certainly Europe can and should shoulder more of the military and financial burden of defending itself, its sea lanes, and its interests in the Middle East. But do we really want to encourage the active remilitarization of a Japan that has yet to come to grips with its own war guilt, and in which assertive nationalism is on the rise? A continued American security partnership with Japan, as part of our strategic engagement in Northeast Asia, seems a better and safer bet for peace and stability.

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Heg Sustainable
The US is uncontested in both military and economic power. Stephen G. Brooks, Assistant Prof, Govy, Dartmouth, and William C. Wohlforth, Associate Prof, Dept Govt, Dartmouth College, Jul/Aug, 2002, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, Issue 4, ebsco
To understand just how dominant the United States is today, one needs to look at each of the standard components of national power in succession. In the military arena, the United States is poised to spend more on defense in 2003 than the next 15-20 biggest spenders combined. The United States has overwhelming nuclear superiority, the world's dominant air force, the only truly blue-water navy, and a unique capability to project power around the globe. And its military advantage is even more apparent in quality than in quantity. The United States leads the world in exploiting the military applications of advanced communications and information technology and it has demonstrated an unrivaled ability to coordinate and process information about the battlefield and destroy targets from afar with extraordinary precision. Washington is not making it easy for others to catch up, moreover, given the massive gap in spending on military research and development (R&D), on which the United States spends three times more than the next six powers combined. Looked at another way, the United States currently spends more on military R&D than Germany or the United Kingdom spends on defense in total. No state in the modern history of international politics has come close to the military predominance these numbers suggest. And the United States purchases this preeminence with only 3.5 percent of its GDP. As historian Paul Kennedy notes, "being Number One at great cost is one thing; being the world's single superpower on the cheap is astonishing." America's economic dominance, meanwhile -- relative to either the next several richest powers or the rest of the world combined -surpasses that of any great power in modern history, with the sole exception of its own position after 1945 (when World War II had temporarily laid waste every other major economy). The U.S. economy is currently twice as large as its closest rival, Japan. California's economy alone has risen to become the fifth largest in the world (using market exchange-rate estimates), ahead of France and just behind the United Kingdom. It is true that the long expansion of the 1990s has ebbed, but it would take an experience like Japan's in that decade -- that is, an extraordinarily deep and prolonged domestic recession juxtaposed with robust growth elsewhere -- for the United States just to fall back to the economic position it occupied in 1991. The odds against such relative decline are long, however, in part because the United States is the country in the best position to take advantage of globalization. Its status as the preferred destination for scientifically trained foreign workers solidified during the 1990s, and it is the most popular destination for foreign firms. In 1999 it attracted more than one-third of world inflows of foreign direct investment. U.S. military and economic dominance, finally, is rooted in the country's position as the world's leading technological power. Although measuring national R&D spending is increasingly difficult in an era in which so many economic activities cross borders, efforts to do so indicate America's continuing lead. Figures from the late 1990s showed that U.S. expenditures on R&D nearly equaled those of the next seven richest countries combined. Measuring the degree of American dominance in each category begins to place things in perspective. But what truly distinguishes the current international system is American dominance in all of them simultaneously. Previous leading states in the modern era were either great commercial and naval powers or great military powers on land, never both. The British Empire in its heyday and the United States during the Cold War, for example, each shared the world with other powers that matched or exceeded them in some areas. Following the Napoleonic Wars, the United Kingdom was clearly the world's leading commercial and naval power. But even at the height of the Pax Britannica, the United Kingdom was outspent, outmanned, and outgunned by both France and Russia. And its 24 percent share of GDP among the six leading powers in the early 1870s was matched by the United States, with Russia and Germany following close behind. Similarly, at the dawn of the Cold War the United States was clearly dominant economically as well as in air and naval capabilities. But the Soviet Union retained overall military parity, and thanks to geography and investment in land power it had a superior ability to seize territory in Eurasia.

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Heg Sustainable
The US will remain the hegemon – strong economy, military tech, and geography prove. Barry R. Posen is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The American Interest, Vol. 3, No. 2, Nov/Dec 2007, http://www.the-americaninterest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=331&MId=16 Unipolarity. By almost every reasonable measure the United States emerged from the Cold War as one of the most powerful states in history. Its population exceeded that of any other great or middle power except China and India, and has continued to grow. Its GDP was (and remains) two or three times that of its closest economic competitor. Even after postCold War reductions, U.S. military spending exceeded the combined defense budgets of most of the other large powers in the world; today it exceeds the defense spending of the rest of the entire world combined. U.S. military technology sets the world standard; its strategic nuclear and conventional forces are peerless. The United States had (and retains) command of the global commons—the sea, the air and space—and U.S. technical capabilities for intelligence collection far eclipse those of any other state. (Indeed, the U.S. intelligence budget alone has roughly equaled the entire defense budgets of Britain or France, two of the world’s most capable military powers, and the only ones other than the United States with any global reach.) The United States also enjoyed (and still enjoys) a favorable geographical position—with weak and friendly neighbors to the north and south, oceans to the east and west. The Cold War network of global alliances, coupled with massive investments in strategic lift, gave the U.S. military the ability to put large forces almost anywhere there is a coastline. In 1991, five U.S. divisions reached Saudi Arabia in four months, and nearly ten in six months. Additionally, the collapse of Soviet power, and the all-but-rhetorical abandonment of communist principles of economic, social and political organization in China, left Western elites, especially in the United States, with a feeling of ideological triumph. Democracy and capitalism had won the great ideological struggle of the 20th century, and it was easy to suppose that all that was left were mopping-up operations. Other nation-states would easily find their way to our way: History, if it wasn’t “over”, was certainly on our side.

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AT: Transition Now
Arguments about transitioning early and showing restraint now are wrong – we should use our power while we have it. Randall Schweller, Assoc. Professor Political Science at Ohio State, “The Problem of International Order Revisted”, International Security, Summer 2001, Lexis
First, although hegemonic decline may be inevitable, it is not self-evident that a policy of strategic restraint better serves the hegemon's longrun interests than simply taking advantage of its power position to grab immediate gains. Indeed there is no a priori reason to conclude that instant postwar benefits (e.g., increases in the size of the new hegemon's territorial boundaries, spheres of influence, colonial possessions, etc.) will not continue to accrue significant future gains and thereby better serve to arrest the pace of hegemonic decline than Ikenberry's alternative of a constitutional peace settlement. Because one can make an equally impressive logical case to support either position, theoretical arguments alone will not tell us whether the choice to transform is more likely to benefit the hegemon over the long run than is the decision to dominate. It is ultimately an empirical question.In practice, there has been a strong relationship between the growth in power of a state and its desire to extend its territorial control, political influence, and domination of the international economy.[25] Great powers have tended to expand when they can. They have done so not necessarily to satisfy an innate lust for power, prestige, and glory—though history is replete with such cases—but rather because anarchy compels states to enhance their security and influence over others and their environment whenever it is possible and pragmatic for them to do SO.[26] Hegemonic postwar junctures are precisely when great powers, especially the leading state, can be expected to expand, not bind, their power. Because nature and politics abhor a vacuum, the victors will move quickly to fill the political vacuums left behind by the defeated great powers. This is predictable behavior because, when presented with such an extraordinary opportunity to expand the state's territory and influence, political leaders “can be said to act under external compulsion rather than in accordance with their preferences”:[27] That is, their actions are driven by irresistible temptation.Second, even if decisionmakers believe that hegemonic decline is inevitable, there are plenty of reasons why they would not and should not act on that belief. First, leaders have few if any domestic incentives to abandon policies of autonomy and unilateralism in favor of multilateralism and selfrestraint. The incentive structure of elites, even foreign policy ones, is primarily a function of domestic, not international, politics. No matter how much internationalists may champion multilateral solutions, elected officials must answer to a domestic audience, and unelected bureaucrats must serve and promote the autonomy and interests of the bureaucratic organization to which they belong. Second, Ikenberry's claim rests on an unrealistic assumption about the time horizons of democratic leaders. Even if we concede the point that the creation of a constitutional order is a wise long-term investment for the new hegemonic state, history records few decisionmakers who acted in such a farsighted manner. This is particularly true for leaders of democratic states, because the primary goal for most elected officials is to ensure reelection. Why, then, should we expect democratically elected policymakers of a newly hegemonic state to forgo immediate gains for long-run payoffs that may or may not be reaped decades later—long after they have left office? Finally, the deliberate choice to restrain the exercise of power now because of the possibility (but not certainty) of exerting relatively less power later is like committing suicide for fear of death. The key question for postwar leaders is not whether but when decline will come and how much deterioration can be expected. Had American policymakers, for example, been persuaded by the chorus of scholars in the 1970s to late 1980s proclaiming that U.S. power was in terminal decline, the Cold War might have continued for decades longer; and it surely would noth ave ended in total victory for the West. Thankfully, instead of constraining American power and preparing for inevitable decline, the Reagan administration began ramping up U.S. power capabilities in the 1980s, arresting America's relative decline through bold policy choices.[28] Consequently, as Ikenberry himself acknowledges, “American power in the 1990s is without historical precedent” (p. 270).It is worth pointing out that even in the late 1980s, few if any foreign policy experts forecasted America's current supremacy in a unipolar world. This predictive failure, however, is not proof of the impoverishment of international relations theories, as many have claimed.[29] The (painful for some) truth is that the future power position of the United States or any other country is simply beyond prediction. This is because the power trajectories of nations, especially powerful ones, are not structurally determined; they are the result of wise or imprudent policy choices.

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Khalilzad Short
Leadership prevents global nuclear exchange
Zalmay Khalilzad 95, Defense Analyst at RAND , "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War" The Washington Quarterly, RETHINKING GRAND STRATEGY; Vol. 18, No. 2; Pg. 84 Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

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Khalilzad Long (1/2)
US leadership is key to solving all the worlds problems – European, Asian, Middle-eastern wars, economic collapse, nuclear proliferation and use. Zalmay Khalilzad 95, Defense Analyst at RAND , "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War" The
Washington Quarterly, RETHINKING GRAND STRATEGY; Vol. 18, No. 2; Pg. 84) Realistically and over the longer term, however, a neo-isolationist approach might well increase the danger of major conflict, require a greater U.S. defense effort, threaten world peace, and eventually undermine U.S. prosperity. By withdrawing from Europe and Asia, the United States would deliberately risk weakening the institutions and solidarity of the world's community of democratic powers and so establishing favorable conditions for the spread of disorder and a possible return to conditions similar to those of the first half of the twentieth century. In the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. isolationism had disastrous consequences for world peace. At that time, the United States was but one of several major powers. Now that the United States is the world's preponderant power, the shock of a U.S. withdrawal could be even greater. What might happen to the world if the United States turned inward? Without the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), rather than cooperating with each other, the West European nations might compete with each other for domination of East-Central Europe and the Middle East. In Western and Central Europe, Germany -- especially since unification -- would be the natural leading power. Either in cooperation or competition with Russia, Germany might seek influence over the territories located between them. German efforts are likely to be aimed at filling the vacuum, stabilizing the region, and precluding its domination by rival powers. Britain and France fear such a development. Given the strength of democracy in Germany and its preoccupation with absorbing the former East Germany, European concerns about Germany appear exaggerated. But it would be a mistake to assume that U.S. withdrawal could not, in the long run, result in the renationalization of Germany's security policy. The same is also true of Japan. Given a U.S. withdrawal from the world, Japan would have to look after its own security and build up its military capabilities. China, Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia already fear Japanese hegemony. Without U.S. protection, Japan is likely to increase its military capability dramatically -- to balance the growing Chinese forces and still-significant Russian forces. This could result in arms races, including the possible acquisition by Japan of nuclear weapons. Given Japanese technological prowess, to say nothing of the plutonium stockpile Japan has acquired in the development of its nuclear power industry, it could obviously become a nuclear weapon state relatively quickly, if it should so decide. It could also build long-range missiles and carrier task forces. With the shifting balance of power among Japan, China, Russia, and potential new regional powers such as India, Indonesia, and a united Korea could come significant risks of preventive or proeruptive war. Similarly, European competition for regional dominance could lead to major wars in Europe or East Asia. If the United States stayed out of such a war -- an unlikely prospect -- Europe or East Asia could become dominated by a hostile power. Such a development would threaten U.S. interests. A power that achieved such dominance would seek to exclude the United States from the area and threaten its interests-economic and political -- in the region. Besides, with the domination of Europe or East Asia, such a power might seek global hegemony and the United States would face another global Cold War and the risk of a world war even more catastrophic than the last. In the Persian Gulf, U.S. withdrawal is likely to lead to an intensified struggle for regional domination. Iran and Iraq have, in the past, both sought regional hegemony. Without U.S. protection, the weak oil-rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) would be unlikely to retain their independence. To preclude this development, the Saudis might seek to acquire, perhaps by purchase, their own nuclear weapons. If either Iraq or Iran controlled the region that dominates the world supply of oil, it could gain a significant capability to damage the U.S. and world economies. Any country that gained hegemony would have vast economic resources at its disposal that could be used to build military capability as well as gain leverage over the United States and other oilimporting nations. Hegemony over the Persian Gulf by either Iran or Iraq would bring the rest of the Arab Middle East under its influence and domination because of the shift in the balance of power. Israeli security problems would multiply and the peace process would be fundamentally undermined, increasing the risk of war between the Arabs and the Israelis. The extension of instability, conflict, and hostile hegemony in East Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf would harm the economy of the United States even in the unlikely event that it was able to avoid involvement in major wars and conflicts. Higher oil prices would reduce the U.S. standard of living. Turmoil in Asia and Europe would force major economic readjustment in the United States, perhaps reducing U.S. exports and imports and jeopardizing U.S. investments in these regions. Given that total imports and exports are equal to a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product, the cost of necessary adjustments might be high. The higher level of turmoil in the world would also increase the likelihood of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and means for their delivery. Already several rogue states such as North Korea and Iran are seeking nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. That danger

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would only increase if the United States withdrew from the world. The result would be a much more dangerous world in which many states possessed WMD capabilities; the likelihood of their actual use would increase accordingly. If this happened, the security of every nation in the world, including the United States, would be harmed. At present, mainstream sentiment in the two major U.S. political parties rejects isolationism as a national strategy, even though both have elements favoring it. It is possible, however, that without a vision and grand strategy, the United States might follow policies that result in at least some of the consequences of a neo-isolationist strategy.

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Thayer (1/3)
American primacy is vital to accessing every major impact— we can’t let it collapse.
Thayer 2006 [Bradley A., Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, The National Interest, November -December, "In Defense of Primacy", lexis] A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly and unambiguously on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes--their own protection, or to gain greater influence. Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this country, or any country, had so many allies. U.S. primacy --and the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international politics , allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States . They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and actions of the United States. China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will, if necessary, resort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communication and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates.The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases--Venezuela, Iran, Cuba--it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically anti-American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists , most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships aligned --between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much

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Thayer (2/3)
good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Washington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the global economy. characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global public good from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides. Fourth and finally, the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to advance its interests but to promote the welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"--it serves, de facto, as the world's police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries in need. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid. Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply UN forces. American generosity has done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost any other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million homeless. The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting

Thayer (3/3)
helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in 33

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need, the United States also provided financial aid to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well-spent because it helped people in the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim opinion of the United States. As the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United States humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg. THERE IS no other state, group of states or international organization that can provide these global benefits. None even comes close. The United Nations cannot because it is riven with conflicts and major cleavages that divide the international body time and again on matters great and trivial. Thus it lacks the ability to speak with one voice on salient issues and to act as a unified force once a decision is reached. The EU has similar problems. Does anyone expect Russia or China to take up these responsibilities? They may have the desire, but they do not have the capabilities. Let's face it: for the time being, American primacy remains humanity's only practical hope of solving the world's ills.

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AT: Counterbalancing
Counterbalancing will fail – regional powers will balance each other. Stephen G. Brooks, Assistant Prof, Govy, Dartmouth, and William C. Wohlforth, Associate Prof, Dept Govt, Dartmouth College, Jul/Aug, 2002, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, Issue 4, ebsco
Many who acknowledge the extent of American power, however, regard it as necessarily self-negating. Other states traditionally band together to restrain potential hegemons, they say, and this time will be no different. As German political commentator Josef Joffe has put it, "the history books say that Mr. Big always invites his own demise. Nos. 2, 3, 4 will gang up on him, form countervailing alliances and plot his downfall. That happened to Napoleon, as it happened to Louis xiv and the mighty Hapsburgs, to Hitler and to Stalin. Power begets superior counterpower; it's the oldest rule of world politics." What such arguments fail to recognize are the features of America's post-Cold War position that make it likely to buck the historical trend. Bounded by oceans to the east and west and weak, friendly powers to the north and south, the United States is both less vulnerable than previous aspiring hegemons and also less threatening to others. The main potential challengers to its unipolarity, meanwhile -- China, Russia, Japan, and Germany -- are in the opposite position. They cannot augment their military capabilities so as to balance the United States without simultaneously becoming an immediate threat to their neighbors. Politics, even international politics, is local. Although American power attracts a lot of attention globally, states are usually more concerned with their own neighborhoods than with the global equilibrium. Were any of the potential challengers to make a serious run at the United States, regional balancing efforts would almost certainly help contain them, as would the massive latent power capabilities of the United States, which could be mobilized as necessary to head off an emerging threat.

Historical accounts of counterbalancing are wrong – don’t take the US’s circumstances into account. Stephen G. Brooks, Assistant Prof, Govy, Dartmouth, and William C. Wohlforth, Associate Prof, Dept Govt, Dartmouth College, Jul/Aug, 2002, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, Issue 4, ebsco
When analysts refer to a historical pattern of balancing against potentially preponderant powers, they rarely note that the cases in question -- the Hapsburg ascendancy, Napoleonic France, the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and so forth -- featured wouldbe hegemons that were vulnerable, threatening, centrally located, and dominant in only one or two components of power. Moreover, the would-be hegemons all specialized in precisely the form of power -- the ability to seize territory -- most likely to scare other states into an antihegemonic coalition. American capabilities, by contrast, are relatively greater and more comprehensive than those of past hegemonic aspirants, they are located safely offshore, and the prospective balancers are close regional neighbors of one another. U.S. power is also at the command of one government, whereas the putative balancers would face major challenges in acting collectively to assemble and coordinate their military capabilities. Previous historical experiences of balancing, moreover, involved groups of status quo powers seeking to contain a rising revisionist one. The balancers had much to fear if the aspiring hegemon got its way. Today, however, U.S. dominance is the status quo. Several of the major powers in the system have been closely allied with the United States for decades and derive substantial benefits from their position. Not only would they have to forego those benefits if they tried to balance, but they would have to find some way of putting together a durable, coherent alliance while America was watching. This is a profoundly important point, because although there may be several precedents for a coalition of balancers preventing a hegemon from emerging, there is none for a group of subordinate powers joining to topple a hegemon once it has already emerged, which is what would have to happen today.

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AT: EU Counterbalancing
The EU won’t counterbalance us –not enough military power or authority. Stephen G. Brooks, Assistant Prof, Govy, Dartmouth, and William C. Wohlforth, Associate Prof, Dept Govt, Dartmouth College, Jul/Aug, 2002, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, Issue 4, ebsco
Some might argue that the European Union is an exception to the big-or-rich rule. It is true that if Brussels were to develop impressive military capabilities and wield its latent collective power like a state, the EU would clearly constitute another pole. But the creation of an autonomous and unified defense and defense-industrial capacity that could compete with that of the United States would be a gargantuan task. The EU is struggling to put together a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force that is designed for smaller operations such as humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, and crisis management, but it still lacks military essentials such as capabilities in intelligence gathering, airlift, air-defense suppression, air-to-air refueling, sea transport, medical care, and combat search and rescue -- and even when it has those capacities, perhaps by the end of this decade, it will still rely on NATO command and control and other assets. Whatever capability the EU eventually assembles, moreover, will matter only to the extent that it is under the control of a statelike decision-making body with the authority to act quickly and decisively in Europe's name. Such authority, which does not yet exist even for international financial matters, could be purchased only at the price of a direct frontal assault on European nations' core sovereignty. And all of this would have to occur as the EU expands to add ten or more new member states, a process that will complicate further deepening. Given these obstacles, Europe is unlikely to emerge as a dominant actor in the military realm for a very long time, if ever.

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AT: China Counterbalancing
China won’t ascend to power – economy and counterbalancing prevent it. Stephen G. Brooks, Assistant Prof, Govy, Dartmouth, and William C. Wohlforth, Associate Prof, Dept Govt, Dartmouth College, Jul/Aug, 2002, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, Issue 4, ebsco
Most analysts looking for a future peer competitor to the United States, therefore, focus on China, since it is the only power with the potential to match the size of the U.S. economy over the next several decades. Yet even if China were eventually to catch up to the United States in terms of aggregate GDP, the gaps in the two states' other power capabilities -- technological, military, and geographic -- would remain. Since the mid-1990s, Chinese strategists themselves have become markedly less bullish about their country's ability to close the gap in what they call "comprehensive national power" any time soon. The latest estimates by China's intelligence agency project that in 2020 the country will possess between slightly more than a third and slightly more than half of U.S. capabilities. Fifty percent of China's labor force is employed in agriculture, and relatively little of its economy is geared toward high technology. In the 1990s, U.S. spending on technological development was more than 20 times China's. Most of China's weapons are decades old. And nothing China can do will allow it to escape its geography, which leaves it surrounded by countries that have the motivation and ability to engage in balancing of their own should China start to build up an expansive military force. These are not just facts about the current system; they are recognized as such by the major players involved. As a result, no global challenge to the United States is likely to emerge for the foreseeable future. No country, or group of countries, wants to maneuver itself into a situation in which it will have to contend with the focused enmity of the United States.

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AT: Offshore balancing
We must exert our hegemony instead of withdrawing from the world – 4 reasons. G. John Ikenberry is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. The American Interest, Vol. 3, No. 2, Nov/Dec 2007
The Iraq war will be rendered all the more tragic if it leads America to pull back from its European and Asian security partnerships and its leadership in maintaining the institutional bases of global order—but this is precisely what Barry Posen proposes. One can applaud his arguments for a less-is-more approach to the Middle East and the problem of Islamic radicalism, which are based on a more plausible theory of terrorism and modern Arab history than the shifting theses offered by the Bush Administration. However, this argument is only loosely related to his broader call for a grand strategy of “restraint”, and this is deeply problematic. Posen makes four mistakes. First, he conflates all the various types of “activist” grand strategies and sees all of them as equally misguided. In fact, liberal and neoconservative strategies offer profoundly different visions of international order. If neoconservatives want to employ American power to control the international system, liberal internationalists want to use American power to shape it through the provisioning of rules and institutions. Second, in conflating these alternatives, Posen misses the same point that his neoconservative rivals miss—namely, that America can best pursue its global interests with a functioning governance system that facilitates cooperation in world politics. Posen acknowledges the importance of such governance mechanisms when he talks about the need for a revived Non-Proliferation Treaty and other security regimes. Indeed, the world is thirsting today for a revived system of rules and tools for collective action. Posen notes the troubling way in which the world has pushed back in the face of the unbridled exercise of American power, but it is precisely Washington’s commitment to rules and institutions of governance that reduces the incentives for these soft balancing moves. Hence Posen’s third mistake is that he narrowly associates “restraint” with the retraction of America’s security commitments in Europe and Asia. The argument he makes is that these alliance partnerships create a moral hazard. Relying on American commitments, other countries shirk their responsibilities, while the United States finds itself intervening everywhere and getting into trouble. But these alliances—as well as America’s commitment to a wider array of multilateral institutions—are actually an essential tool for the establishment of American strategic restraint. These institutions provide mechanisms for other countries to engage Washington, and they establish constraints and obligations that at least partly inhibit American unilateralism. The lesson of the Iraq war is not for America to “come home”, but to tie itself more tightly to its allies. Yes, there are dangers that this extended security system will provide opportunities for strategic blunders and overextension. But the solution is better collective decision-making, not the wholesale scrapping of the postwar system. Finally, to pull back from a liberal internationalist grand strategy is to lose the opportunity to lay down the institutional foundations for a global order that serves American interests in future years, when it is likely to be relatively less powerful. Think of it as investing in the future. We should be working at this moment to shape the global system so that the institutional legacies of today’s actions put the United States in the best position possible to secure its interests when the wheel of power turns and other countries loom larger. This requires activism, of a certain sort.

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AT: Offshore Balancing
Allies can’t maintain regional order and deter rising powers – the US must remain engaged Larry Diamond, 1996, Senior researcher fellow at Hoover Institution, Orbis, “Beyond the Unipolar Moment: Why the
United States Must Remain Engaged”, p. 405-413) As for provoking our allies to pick up the burden and coalesce, certainly we need to pursue more-equitable burden sharing. And to some extent (especially in the war in the Persian Gulf), we have done so. But there are three serious problems with the confident assumption that our allies can and will fill the gaps we leave. First, they may judge that, absent a significant U.S. security presence, they lack the collective power to balance and deter a rising regional power. Thus, they may consider the only realistic course to be to fall into its power orbit, to capitulate preemptively and join its bandwagon. Secondly, enough countries in a region may judge capitulation cheaper and easier than resistance, so that the others have no choice but to fall in line. As Samuel Huntington has suggested, the prospect of East Asian countries, from japan to Thailand, responding to China in this way is very real, and it will increase significantly if the United States withdraws as a balancing force. The same can be said with respect to Iran and its smaller Gulf neighbors. Thirdly, we should always beware of what we wish for-it may come true. For instance, the time may be at hand to assign a much more active security role to a Germany that has long since candidly acknowledged its war crimes and become a leading force for European integration. Certainly Europe can and should shoulder more of the military and financial burden of defending itself, its sea lanes, and its interests in the Middle East. But do we really want to encourage the active remilitarization of a Japan that has yet to come to grips with its own war guilt, and in which assertive nationalism is on the rise? A continued American security partnership with Japan, as part of our strategic engagement in Northeast Asia, seems a better and safer bet for peace and stability.

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Heg good modules – Prolif (1/3)
U.S. hegemony key to preventing proliferation and global nuclear war. Zalmay Khalilzad, Defense Analyst at RAND, "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War" The Washington Quarterly, RETHINKING GRAND STRATEGY; Vol. 18, No. 2; Pg. 84, 1995
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

Prolif will trigger preemptive nuclear wars around the planet Victor Utgoff, Deputy Director of Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of Institute for Defense Analysis, “Proliferation, Missile Defence and American Ambitions,” Survival, Summer, p. 87-90, 2002
Further, the large number of states that became capable of building nuclear weapons over the years, but chose not to, can be reasonably well explained by the fact that most were formally allied with either theUnited Statesor theSoviet Union. Both these superpowers had strong nuclear forces and put great pressure on their allies not to build nuclear weapons. Since the Cold War, theUShas retained all its allies. In addition, NATO has extended its protection to some of the previous allies of theSoviet Unionand plans on taking in more. Nuclear proliferation by India and Pakistan, and proliferation programmes by North Korea, Iran and Iraq, all involve states in the opposite situation: all judged that they faced serious military opposition and had little prospect of establishing a reliable supporting alliance with a suitably strong, nucleararmed state. What would await the world if strong protectors, especially theUnited States, were [was] no longer seen as willing to protect states from nuclear-backed aggression? At least a few additional states would begin to build their own nuclear 5 these initiatives would spur increasing numbers of the world’s capable states to follow suit. Restraint would seem ever less necessary and ever more dangerous. Meanwhile, more states are becoming capable of building nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Many, perhaps most, of the world’s states are becoming sufficiently wealthy, and the technology for building nuclear forces continues to improve and spread. Finally, it seems highly likely that at some point, halting proliferation will come to be seen as a lost cause and the restraints on it will disappear. Once that happens, the transition to a highly proliferated world would probably be very rapid. While some regions might be able to hold the line for a time, the threats posed by wildfire proliferation in most other areas could create pressures that would finally overcome all restraint. Many readers are probably willing to accept that nuclear proliferation is such a grave threat to world peace that every effort should be made to avoid it. However, every effort has not been made in the past, and we are talking about much more substantial efforts now. For new and substantially more burdensome efforts to be made to slow or stop nuclear proliferation, it needs to be established that the highly proliferated nuclear world that would sooner or later evolve without such efforts is not going to be acceptable. And, for many reasons, it is not. First,the dynamics of getting to a highly proliferated world could be very dangerous. Proliferating states will feel great pressures to obtain nuclear weapons and delivery systems before any potential opponent does. Those who succeed in outracing an opponent may consider preemptive nuclear war before the opponent becomes capable of nuclear retaliation. Those who lag behind might try to preempt their opponent’s nuclear programme or defeat the opponent using conventional forces. And those who feel threatened but are incapable of building nuclear weapons may still be able to join in this arms race by building other types of weapons of mass destruction, such as biological weapons. Second, as the world approaches complete proliferation, the hazards posed by nuclear weapons today will be magnified many times over. Fifty or more nations capable of launching nuclear weapons means that the risk of nuclear accidents that could cause serious damage not only to their own populations and environments, but those of others, is hugely increased. The chances of such weapons failing into the hands of renegade military units or terrorists is far greater, as is the number of nations

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Heg Good Modules – Prolif (2/3)
carrying out hazardous manufacturing and storage activities. Worse still, in a highly proliferated world there would be more frequent opportunities for the use of nuclear weapons. And more frequent opportunities means shorter expected times between conflicts in which nuclear weapons get used, unless the probability of use at any opportunity is actually zero. To be sure, some theorists on nuclear deterrence appear to think that in any confrontation between two states known to have reliable nuclear capabilities, the probability of nuclear weapons being used is zero.’ These theorists think that such states will be so fearful of escalation to nuclear war that they would always avoid or terminate confrontations between them, short of even conventional war. They believe this to be true even if the two states have different cultures or leaders with very eccentric personalities. History and human nature, however, suggest that they are almost surely wrong. History includes instances in which states ‘known to possess nuclear weapons did engage in direct conventional conflict.ChinaandRussiafought battles along their common border even after both had nuclear weapons. Moreover, logic suggests that if states with nuclear weapons always avoided conflict with one another, surely states without nuclear weapons would avoid conflict with states that had them. Again, history provides counter-examplesEgyptattackedIsraelin 1973 even though it sawIsraelas a nuclear power at the time.Argentinainvaded theFalkland Islandsand foughtBritain’s efforts to take them back, even thoughBritainhad nuclear weapons. Those who claim that two states with reliable nuclear capabilities to devastate each other will not engage in conventional conflict risking nuclear war also assume that any leader from any culture would not choose suicide for his nation. But history provides unhappy examples of states whose leaders were ready to choose suicide for themselves and their fellow citizens. Hitler tried to impose a ‘victory or destruction’’ policy on his people as Nazi Germany was going down to defeat. AndJapan’s war minister, during debates on how to respond to the American atomic bombing, suggested ‘Would it not be wondrous for the whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?” If leaders are willing to engage in conflict with nuclear-armed nations, use of nuclear weapons in any particular instance may not be likely, but its probability would still be dangerously significant. In particular, human nature suggests that the threat of retaliation with nuclear weapons is not a reliable guarantee against a disastrous first use of these weapons. While national leaders and their advisors everywhere are usually talented and experienced people, even their most important decisions cannot be counted on to be the product of well-informed and thorough assessments of all options from all relevant points of view. This is especially so when the stakes are so large as to defy assessment and there are substantial pressures to act quickly, as could be expected in intense and fast-moving crises between nuclear-armed states. Instead, like other human beings, national leaders can be seduced by wishful thinking. They can misinterpret the words or actions of opposing leaders. Their advisors may produce answers that they think the leader wants to hear, or coalesce around what they know is an inferior decision because the group urgently needs the confidence or the sharing of responsibility that results from settling on something. Moreover, leaders may not 41ecognize clearly where their personal or party interests diverge from those of their citizens. Under great stress, human beings can lose their ability to think carefully. They can refuse to believe that the worst could really happen, oversimplify the problem at hand, think in terms of simplistic analogies and play hunches. The intuitive rules for how individuals should respond to insults or signs of weakness in an opponent may too readily suggest a rash course of action. Anger, fear, greed, ambition and pride can all lead to bad decisions. The desire for a decisive solution to the problem at hand may lead to an unnecessarily extreme course of action. We can almost hear the kinds of words that could flow from discussions in nuclear crises or war. ‘These people are not willing to die for this interest’. ‘No sane person would actually use such weapons’. ‘Perhaps the opponent will back down if we show him we mean business by demonstrating a willingness to use nuclear weapons’. ‘If I don’t hit them back really hard, I am going to be driven from office, if not killed’. Whether right or wrong, in the stressful atmosphere of a nuclear crisis or war, such words from others, or silently from within, might resonate too readily with a harried leader. Thus, both history and human nature suggest that nuclear deterrence can be expected to fail from time to time, and we are fortunate it has not happened yet. But the threat of nuclear war is not just a matter of a few weapons being used. It could get much worse. Once a conflict reaches the point where nuclear weapons are employed, the stresses felt by the leaderships would rise enormously. These stresses can be expected to further degrade their decision-making. The pressures to force the enemy to stop fighting or to surrender could argue for more forceful and decisive military action, which might be the right thing to do in the circumstances, but maybe not. And the horrors of the carnage already suffered may be seen as justification for visiting the most devastating punishment possible on the enemy.’ Again, history demonstrates how intense conflict can lead the combatants to escalate violence to the maximum possible levels. In the Second World War, early promises not to bomb cities soon gave way to essentially indiscriminate bombing of civilians. The war betweenIranandIraqduring the

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Heg Good Modules – Prolif (3/3)
1980s led to the use of chemical weapons on both sides and exchanges of missiles against each other’s cities. And more recently, violence in the Middle East escalated in a few months from rocks and small arms to heavy weapons on one side, and from police actions to air strikes and armoured attacks on the other. Escalation of violence is also basic human nature. Once the violence starts, retaliatory exchanges of violent acts can escalate to levels unimagined by the participants before hand. Intense and blinding anger is a common response to fear or humiliation or abuse. And such anger can lead us to impose on our opponents whatever levels of violence are readily accessible. In sum, widespread proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot-outs will have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand. Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the American Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear ‘sixshooters’ on their hips, the world may even be a more polite place than it is today, but every once in a while we will all gather on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations. This kind of world is in no nation’s interest. The means for preventing it must be pursuedvigorously. And, as argued above,a most powerful way to prevent it or slow its emergence is to encourage the more capable states to provide reliable protection to others against aggression, even when that aggression could be backed with nuclear weapons. In other words,the world needs at least one state, preferably several,willingand ableto play the role of sheriff, or to be members of a sheriff’s posse, even in the face of nuclear threats.

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Heg Good Modules - Terrorism
US Intervention is key to prevent another terrorist attack
Lawrence Korb, Project Director of Council Policy Initiative, Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, “A New National Security Strategy in an Age of Terrorists, Tyrants, and Weapons of Mass Destruction”, 2003 http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/National_Security_CPI.pdf) For centuries, international law has accepted that a state need not suffer an attack before it can lawfully take action to repel an imminent danger. Legal scholars condition the first use of force on the presence of an imminent threat.We need to adapt this imminence requirement to today’s realities.The terrorists and tyrants that inhabit the globe will not use conventional means, such as armies, navies, and air forces, to attack us. They plan to rely on “asymmetric warfare”—the use of terror tactics and perhaps even weapons of mass destruction,weapons that will be carefully concealed ,secretly delivered, and employed without warning.In this new threat environment, the inherent right to self-defense enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter includes the right—I would say the legal and moral obligation —to act to protect American interests.To conclude otherwise would be to turn the charter into a suicide pact. In a perfect world, preventive action would be unnecessary. But in the admittedly flawed world of today, it is not enough to act only in response to past aggression. Even a number of “just war” theorists understand that such a reactive strategy plays into the hands of Osama bin Laden and his sympathizers. I agree with many of our religious and moral leaders who say that war should be fought only as a last resort, but preventive action is plainly defensive when it is motivated by a reasonable belief that a serial aggressor, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, is equipping itself with the means to carry out further aggression.

Terrorism will go nuclear – it makes genocides, wars, oppression, and governmental domination inevitable – the result is the end of the WORLD. Mohamed Sid-Ahmed 04 Political Analyst, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm
A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far from certain – the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded. What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.

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Heg Good Modules - Democracy
US hegemony is essential to support democracies
Larry Diamond, Senior researcher fellow at Hoover Institution, Orbis, “Beyond the Unipolar Moment: Why the United States Must Remain Engaged”, p. 405-413, 1996 In the past, global power has been an important reason why certain countries have become models for emulation by others. The global power of the United States, and of its Western democratic allies, has been a factor in the diffusion of democracy around the world, and certainly is crucial to our ability to help popular, legitimate democratic forces deter armed threats to their overthrow, or to return to power (as in Haiti) when they have been overthrown. Given the linkages among democracy, peace, and human rights-as well as the recent finding of Professor Adam Przeworski (New York University) that democracy is more likely to survive in a country when it is more widely present in the region-we should not surrender our capacity to diffuse and defend democracy. It is not only intrinsic to our ideals but important to our national security that we remain globally powerful and engagedand that a dictatorship does not rise to hegemonic power within any major region.

Democratic consolidation is key to preventing nuclear war. Larry Diamond 1995, staff, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990’s”, Oct, p. online:
http://www.carnegie.org/sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html lexis This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

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Heg Good Modules - Economy
Heg is key to sustaining the economy – trade, oil, and investments Zalmay Khalilzad, Defense Analyst at RAND, "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War" The Washington Quarterly, RETHINKING GRAND STRATEGY; Vol. 18, No. 2; Pg. 84, 1995
The extension of instability, conflict, and hostile hegemony in East Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf would harm the economy of the United States even in the unlikely event that it was able to avoid involvement in major wars and conflicts. Higher oil prices would reduce the U.S. standard of living. Turmoil in Asia and Europe would force major economic readjustment in the United States, perhaps reducing U.S. exports and imports and jeopardizing U.S. investments in these regions. Given that total imports and exports are equal to a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product, the cost of necessary adjustments might be high

US economic collapse will spark global nuclear war Richard Cook, retired federal analyst, former Treasury Dept analyst, economic consultant, Global Research , 6-14-07,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5964] Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than face the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to World War II. Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they don’t want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes?

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Heg Good Modules – Free Trade
US power is key to global capitalism and free trade
Benjamin Schwarz , Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, “Why America thinks it has to run the world,” The Atlantic Monthly, Vol.277, Iss. 6, pg. 92-100, June, Proquest 1996 America's foreign policy has been based on a hybrid of Lenin's and Kautsky's analyses. It has aimed at the unified, liberalized international capitalist community Kautsky envisioned. But the global role that the United States has undertaken to sustain that community is determined by a worldview very close to Lenin's. To Washington, Baker's "global liberal economic regime" cannot be maintained simply by an internationalized economic elite's desire for it to exist; it can be maintained only by American power. Thus, in explaining its global strategy in 1993, in its "post-Cold War" defense strategy, the Pentagon defined the creation of "a prosperous, largely democratic, market-oriented zone of peace and prosperity that encompasses more than two-thirds of the world's economy" as "perhaps our nation's most significant achievement since the Second World War "--not the victory over Moscow. And it declared that this global capitalist order required the "stability" that only American "leadership" could provide. Ultimately, of course, U.S. policymakers and Lenin diverge. Although Lenin recognized that any given international political order was by its nature impermanent, America's foreign-policy strategists have hoped to keep the reality of international politics permanently at bay.

Free trade checks global nuclear conflict
Vincent Miller, Founder and President of the International Society for Individual Liberty and James Elwood, Vice-President of the ISIL, “FREE TRADE OR PROTECTIONISM? The Case Against Trade Restrictions”, 1988 http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/freetrade-protectionism.html WHEN GOODS DON'T CROSS BORDERS, ARMIES OFTEN DO History is not lacking in examples of cold trade wars escalating into hot shooting wars: * Europe suffered from almost non-stop wars during the 17th and 18th centuries, when restrictive trade policy (mercantilism) was the rule; rival governments fought each other to expand their empires and to exploit captive markets. * British tariffs provoked the American colonists to revolution, and later the Northern-dominated US government imposed restrictions on Southern cotton exports - a major factor leading to the American Civil War. * In the late 19th Century, after a half century of general free trade (which brought a half-century of peace), short-sighted politicians throughout Europe again began erecting trade barriers. Hostilities built up until they eventually exploded into World War I. * In 1930, facing only a mild recession, US President Hoover ignored warning pleas in a petition by 1028 prominent economists and signed the notorious Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised some tariffs to 100% levels. Within a year, over 25 other governments had retaliated by passing similar laws. The result? World trade came to a grinding halt, and the entire world was plunged into the "Great Depression" for the rest of the decade. The depression in turn led to World War II. The world enjoyed its greatest economic growth during the relatively free trade period of 1945-1970, a period that also saw no major wars. Yet we again see trade barriers being raised around the world by short-sighted politicians. Will the world again end up in a shooting war as a result of these economically-deranged policies? Can we afford to allow this to happen in the nuclear age?

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Heg Good Modules - Space
It is crucial that the United States maintain leadership in Space to deter conflicts. Dolman, Everett C. "Strategy Lost: Taking the Middle Road to Nowhere." High Frontier Journal. Vol. 3, No. 1 Winter, 2005
Common to all hedging strategy proponents is the fear that placing weapons in space will spur a new arms race. Unfortunately, such a strategy increases the likelihood of a space arms race if and when space weapons are ultimately deployed, as the only plausible response by the US would be to at least match the opposing capabilities. This dithering approach blatantly ignores the current real world situation. At present, the US has no peer competitors in space. For the US to refrain from weaponizing until another state proves the capacity to challenge it allows for potential enemies to catch up to American capabilities. At a minimum, there is no risk for potential peer competitors to try. On the other hand, should the US reject the hedging strategy and unilaterally deploy weapons in space, other states may rationally decide not to compete. The cost of entry will simply be too great; the probability of failure palpable. In other words, the fear of an arms race in space, the most powerful argument in favor of the hedging plan, is most likely if the US follows its counsel.

This leads to global nuclear war.
Theresa Hitchens, Editor of Defense News, Director of Center for Defense Information, Former director of British American Security Information Council -think tank based in Washington and London. October 2, 2003 http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1745) The negative consequences of a space arms race are hard to exaggerate, given the inherent offense-dominant nature of space warfare. Space weapons, like anything else on orbit, are inherently vulnerable and, therefore, best exploited as first-strike weapons. Thus, as Michael Krepon and Chris Clary argue in their monograph, “Space Assurance or Space Dominance,” the hair-trigger postures of the nuclear competition between the United States and Russia during the Cold War would be elevated to the “ultimate high ground” of space. Furthermore, any conflict involving ASAT use is likely to highly escalatory, in particular among nuclear weapons states, as the objective of an attacker would be to eliminate the other side’s capabilities to respond either in kind or on the ground by taking out satellites providing surveillance, communications and targeting. Indeed, U.S. Air Force officials participating in space wargames have discovered that war in space rapidly deteriorates into all-out nuclear war, precisely because it quickly becomes impossible to know if the other side has gone nuclear. Aviation Week and Space Technology quoted one gamer as saying simply: “[If] I don’t know what’s going on, I have no choice but to hit everything, using everything I have.” This should not be surprising to anyone – the United States and the Soviet Union found this out very early in the Cold War, and thus took measures to ensure transparency, such as placing emphasis on early warning radars, developing the “hotline” and pledging to non-interference with national technical means of verification under arms control treaties.

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Heg Good Modules – China Containment
First, strong American capabilities and the containment of China is critical to prevent aggression and war over Taiwan. Zalmay Khalilzad, Defense Analyst at RAND, "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War" The Washington Quarterly, RETHINKING GRAND STRATEGY; Vol. 18, No. 2; Pg. 84, 1995
Third, the United States should seek to strengthen its own relative capabilities and those of its friends in East Asia to deter possible Chinese aggression and deal effectively with a more powerful, potentially hostile China. China's military leaders are considering the possibility of a conflict with the United States. They recognize the overall superiority of the U.S. military but believe there are weaknesses that could be exploited while preventing the United States from bringing its full power to bear in case of a conflict over Taiwan. According to the Chinese, U.S. weaknesses include vulnerability of U.S. bases to missile attacks, heavy U.S. reliance on space, America's need to rapidly reinforce the region in times of conflict, susceptibility of U.S. cities to being held hostage, and America's sensitivity to casualties. According to the emerging Chinese doctrine, the local balance of power in the region will be decisive because in this new era wars are short and intense. In a possible Taiwan conflict China would seek to create a fait accompli, forcing the United States to risk major escalation and high levels of violence to reinstate the status quo ante. China might gamble that these risks would constrain the U.S. response. Such an approach by China would be extremely risky and could lead to a major war. Dealing with such possible challenges from China both in the near and long term requires many steps. Burdensharing and enhanced ties with states in East and Southeast Asia will be important. New formal alliance relationships--which would be the central element of a containment strategy--are neither necessary nor practical at this time, but it would be prudent to take some preparatory steps to facilitate the formation of a new alliance or the establishment of new military bases should that become necessary. They would signal to China that any attempt on their part to seek regional hegemony would be costly. The steps we should take now in the region must include enhancing military-to-military relations between Japan and South Korea, encouraging increased political- military cooperation among the ASEAN states and resolving overlapping claims to the Spratly Islands and the South China Sea; fostering a Japanese-Russian rapprochement, including a settlement of the dispute over the "northern territories;" and enhancing military-to-military cooperation between the United States and the ASEAN states. These steps are important in themselves for deterrence and regional stability but they can also assist in shifting to a much tougher policy toward China should that become necessary. Because of the potential for conflict between the United States and China over issues such as Taiwan, the U.S. military posture in general should take this possibility into account. Measures should be taken to correct the Chinese belief that they can confront the world with a fait accompli in Taiwan. The United States needs expanded joint exercises with states in the region. Ensuring access to key facilities in countries such as the Philippines, pre-positioning stocks in the region, and increasing Taiwan's ability to defend itself would also be prudent. The large distances of the East Asian region also suggest that a future U.S. force-mix must emphasize longer-range systems and stand-off weapons. The United States must develop increased capabilities to protect friendly countries and U.S. forces in the region against possible missile attacks

Taiwan is the most likely scenario for war between China and the US
Yuan-Kang Wang, professor of diplomacy in Taiwan, “China’s Grand Strategy and U.S. Primacy: Is China Balancing American Power?” July, Brookings Institution, 2006 http://www3.brookings.edu/fp/cnaps/papers/wang2006.pdf Of all the issues in U.S.-China relations, Beijing considers Taiwan to be the most important and potentially disruptive. Chinese analysts of various stripes—hardliners, moderates, or liberals—unanimously regard the island democracy of Taiwan as an integral and essential part of China, and support Beijing’s use of force should Taiwan declare de jure independence.46 Beijing charges that Washington’s improved military ties with Taiwan are emboldening the island to pursue independence, and are thus damaging to China’s vital interest. As former vice-premier Qian Qichen notes in his memoir, “Supporting the Taiwan authority and promoting [the strategy of] ‘using Taiwan against China’ has been the established policy of the various administrations of the United States.”47 U.S. provision of defensive armaments to Taiwan (only defensive weapons are allowed under the Taiwan Relations Act) are seen by Beijing as threatening to Chinese nationalism.48

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Hegemony DDI 2008 Kernoff/Olney Krishnan Ramanujan Heg Good Modules – Asian Prolif US heg is key to nuclear arms control in Asia. Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security, defense,
and Asian strategy, April and May 2000 (“Smoke, Fire, and What to do in Asia”, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3492121.html) I believe that the commitment to U.S. regional preeminence remains the best solution to our multiple national security interests in Asia. The relative merits of pursuing the maintenance of preeminence as a grand strategy — as opposed to settling for a local multipolar balance of power or slowly disengaging from the region — can be best demonstrated by testing the consequences of each of these alternatives against the multiple goals pursued by the United States in Asia. The United States has, arguably, several critical interests in Asia. The list here is in decreasing order of importance: The first critical interest consists of preventing, deterring, and reducing the threat of attack on the continental United States and its extended territorial possessions. In the simplest sense, this interest has two components. The first and most important involves preserving the continental United States (conus) and its possessions from threats posed by weapons of mass destruction in Asia. These weapons are important because of the extensive damage they can inflict in relatively compressed time frames. Equally important, as Bracken points out, are the challenges posed by sophisticated delivery systems, like ballistic and cruise missiles and advanced attack aircraft, currently deployed by the wmd-capable states as well as prospective delivery systems that may be acquired by other Asian states over time. This includes both spin-off technologies emerging from space and commercial aviation programs as well as other kinds of nontraditional, covert delivery systems. The other component of this national objective involves protecting the conus and its possessions from conventional attack. Because of the vast distances involved in the Asia-Pacific region, the critical variables here are battlespace denial and power-projection capabilities — both sea- and air-based — that may be acquired by one or more Asian states. Given the changes in technology, these capabilities must be expanded to include other, newer, approaches to conventional warfighting like strategic information warfare and the technologies and operational practices associated with the "revolution in military affairs." In all instances, U.S. interests suggest the following preference ordering: preventing potential adversaries from acquiring such capabilities; if prevention is impossible, deterring their use becomes the next logical objective; and, if even deterrence is unsuccessful, attenuating their worst effects through either extended counterforce options or effective defensive measures finally becomes necessary.

This leads to nuclear war
Joseph Cerincione, Director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Foreign Policy, “The Asian nuclear reaction chain”, Issue 118, Spring, Proquest ‘00 The blocks would fall quickest and hardest in Asia, where proliferation pressures are already building more quickly than anywhere else in the world. If a nuclear breakout takes place in Asia, then the international arms control agreements that have been painstakingly negotiated over the past 40 years will crumble. Moreover, the United States could find itself embroiled in its fourth war on the Asian continent in six decades--a costly rebuke to those who seek the safety of Fortress America by hiding behind national missile defenses. Consider what is already happening: North Korea continues to play guessing games with its nuclear and missile programs; South Korea wants its own missiles to match Pyongyang's; India and Pakistan shoot across borders while running a slow-motion nuclear arms race; China modernizes its nuclear arsenal amid tensions with Taiwan and the United States; Japan's vice defense minister is forced to resign after extolling the benefits of nuclear weapons; and Russia-whose Far East nuclear deployments alone make it the largest Asian nuclear power-struggles to maintain territorial coherence. Five of these states have nuclear weapons; the others are capable of constructing them. Like neutrons firing from a split atom, one nation's actions can trigger reactions throughout the region, which in turn, stimulate additional actions. These nations form an interlocking Asian nuclear reaction chain that vibrates dangerously with each new development. If the frequency and intensity of this reaction cycle increase, critical decisions taken by any one of these governments could cascade into the second great wave of nuclear-weapon proliferation, bringing regional and global economic and political instability and, perhaps, the first combat use of a nuclear weapon since 1945.